TOURING 
;REAT  BRITAIN 


ROBERT    SHACRLETON 


THE  LIBRARY 

OF 

THE  UNIVERSITY 

OF  CALIFORNIA 


PRESENTED  BY 

PROF.CHARLES  A.  KOFOID  AND 

MRS.  PRUDENCE  W.  KOFOID 


TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 


f 
I 


TOURING 
GREAT  BRITAIN 

BY 

ROBERT  SHACKLETON 


Author  of 
UNrisiTED  Places  of  Old  Europe,"  "The  Book  of 
Boston,"  "The  Book  of  New  York,"  Etc. 


Illustrated  with 
Photographs  taken  on  the  Tour 


THE    PENN    PUBLISHING 

COMPANY     PHILADELPHIA 

1917 


Copyright  1914 
Hearst's  International  Library  Co.,  Inc. 

Copyright  1917 
The  Penn  Publishing  Company 


IVI 


CONTENTS 

CHAPTER  PAGE 

I     What  We  Did 1 

II     The   Start 6 

III  Into  Wales 15 

IV  Wending  a  Welsh  Way SO 

V     On  to  Harlech 41 

VI     Through  Shrewsbury 50 

VII     The  Way  to  Worcester 62 

VIII     By  Tewkesbury 75 

IX     The  Valley  of  the  Wye 83 

X  The  Watery  Cities  of  Bath  and  Wells       .       97 

XI  The  Coast  of  Somerset  and  Devon       .        .108 

XII     Clovelly  and  Tintagel 119 

XIII     Eastward   Ho! .127 

XIV     Into  the  South  Downs 137 

XV  The   Ride   to   Winchester       .        .        .        .145 

XVI  On  the  Route  of  the  Conqueror  .        .        .155 

XVII  A  New  Canterbury  Pilgrimage        .        .        .168 

XVIII  The  Valley  of  the  Thames   .        .        .        .181 

XIX     Remote  from  Towns 191 

XX     The  Heart  of  England 199 

XXI     To  Famous  Places 210 

XXII  To  Fotheringay  and  the  Fens       .        .        .221 

XXIII  Through  the  North  Country       .        .        .     234 

V 


VI 


CONTENTS 


CHAPTER 

XXIV  Northumberland  and  the  Roman  Wall 

XXV  Melrose  to  Tantallon     . 

XXVI  The  Lowlands  of  Scotland     . 

XXVII  The  Highlands  of  Scotland   . 

XXVIII  Among  the  Scottish  Lakes     . 

XXIX  By  Afton  Water  and  Gretna  Green 

XXX  The  English  Lakes    .... 

XXXI  On  the   Yorkshire   Moors 

XXXII  Sherwood  Forest  and  Haddon  Hall 

Index      


page 
247 
256 
265 
276 
289 
298 
810 
320 
332 
343 


ILLUSTRATIONS 

Map,  in  colors,  showing  the  route  of  the  Four  .       .       .       Frontispiece 

FACINO 

A  delightful  halt  beside  a  Border  castle  page 

At  an  ideal  inn  of  Elizabethan   days 8 

In  a  leafy  English  lane 

One   of  the  thousands   of  lovely   English  homes  seen   from  the 

roadside 9 

Half-timbered  cottages  in  Darkness  Lane 

The  sundial   of   Cranford   churchyard    .       .^ 16 

A  fine  doorway  in  old  Cranford 

Entrance  to  a  private  park  at  Cranford 17 

The  ancient  Rows   of  Chester 

A   sheep   blockade   in   a   walled  lane     .......       24 

Hawarden,   the  home   of   Gladstone 

Unexpected  music  on  a  Welsh  mountain  road 25 

The  main  street  of  Conway 

The  striking  towers  of  Conway  Castle  .......       32 

A  river  mouth  in  northern  Wales 

Cricket  in  the  cathedral  town  of  Bangor 33 

Within  the  bare  shell  of  Carnarvon 

A  mountain  road  under  Snowdon .       40 

A  lonely  Welsh  cottage 

Harlech  Castle 41 

The  old  oak  settle  in  the  inn  at  Cemmaes 

The  clipped  box  gardens  of  Powis 48 

Deer  photographed  from  the  motor,  in  a  castle  park 

A  winding  street  in  ancient  Shrewsbury 49 

The  tipping  castle  at  Bridgnorth 

A  little  drizzle  in  Bridgnorth  marketplace 72 

Old  black-and-white  houses,  with  passion  flowers,  at  Ormsley 
Worcester    Cathedral    from    the    river 73 

An  ancient  town-cross 

The   Norman   tower    of   Tewkesbury 80 

vu 


yui ILLUSTRATIONS 

FACING 

One  of  the  many  clipped  gardens  that  we  passed  page 

Quaint  roadside  cottages  in  the  Severn  valley 81 

The  window  of  GeoflFrey  of  Monmouth 

Red-coated  soldiers  going  to  church  at  Monmouth  ....       84 

Tintern  Abbey 

The  roadside  inn  at  Alveston    . 85 

The  deserted  arcades  of  Bath 

A  Bath  chair  in  one  of  the  curving  circuses  .       .       .       .       .       .100 

The  charabancs  at  Bristol 

The  squarish  fayade  of  Wells 101 

The  Tor  and  its  tower,  near  Glastonbury 

On  the  moors  of  Devon 108 

The  beautiful  coast  of  Devon 

A    typical   old   inn   coachyard 109 

The  cresset  light  at  Lynmouth 

The  stairway-street  of  Clovelly 120 

Yankees  art  King  Arthur's  Castle 

The  rocky  approach  to  Tintagel 121 

Cheddar  cows  by  the  waterside 

Mudwalled  cottages  of  Sampford  Courtney 128 

The  old  guildhall  of  Exeter 

Children  of  gypsy-like  caravaners 129 

The  overarched  avenue  approaching  Dorchester 

Our  bluecoat  boy  at  Blandford 136 

The  bishop's  garden  at  Salisbury 

Invading  the  solitude  of  Stonehenge 137 

Salisbury  spire,  the  loftiest  in  England 

Brother  Gardner,  of  St.  Cross 144 

The  Itchen,  a  river  of  Izaak  Walton 

Where  Franklin  wrote  most  of  his  Autobiography;  at  Twyford  .     145 

Brighton  by  the  sea 

Bathing   machines   on   the   shingle,    at   Brighton 

Kipling's  close-gated  home  at   Rottingdean 

Poetic  Pevensey;  the  spot  where  William  the  Conqueror  landed  .     156 

We  called  this  our  one-thousand-mile  house 

At  the  Gate  of  Battle  Abbey 

One  of  the  charming  homes  of  Winchelsea 

At  the  tollgate  near   Rye 157 


ILLUSTRATIONS ix 

FACIKG 

A  Norman  porch  at  Canterbury  page 

Two  of  the  chateau-like  hoptowers  of  Kent 172 

The  ancient  Norman  castle  at  Rochester 

Chislehurst,  where   Napoleon   III   died 173 

The  old  Dutch  garden   at   Hampton  Court 

The  level  plain  of  Runnimede 180 

Houseboats  on  the  Thames 

Seeing  the  King  and  Queen  at  Windsor 181 

The  scene  of  Gray's  Elegj^ 

In  the  heart  of  the  Burnham  Beeches 196 

William  Penn's  grave  at  Jordans 

Milton's  cottage  at  Chalfont  St.  Giles 197 

Magdalen  and  its  green  quadrangle 

The    High    Street    of   Oxford 200 

In  the  park  of  Blenheim 

In  a  quiet  Broadway 201 

Stratford   from  the   riverside 

Where  Shakespeare  went  to  school 

Our  motor-car  picture  of  Ann  Hathaway's  cottage 

Guy's  ClifFe:  a  great  mansion  near  Warwick 208 

A  Warwick  peacock  strutting  beside  peacocks  of  box 

The  part  of  Kenilworth  associated  with  Queen  Elizabeth  .       .        .     209 

The  cricket-field  at  Rugby 

A  remarkable  wrought-iron  inn  sign 

The  old  building  into  which  much  of  Fotheringay  was  built 

The  site  of  Fotheringay  Castle,  where  Mary  Queen  of  Scots  was 

beheaded 228 

The  triple  bridge  at  Crowland 

The  dry  old  men  of  Crowland 

The  old  church  of  Boston 

The  cathedral  of  Lincoln 229 


The  moated  grange  at  Scrooby 

The  cathedral  at  York 

The  watergardens  of  Fountains  Abbey 

The  battlefield  of   Marston   Moor 248 

The  ruins  of  Fountains  Abbey 

Coxhoe  Hall,  the  birthplace  of  Mrs.  Browning 

The  entrance  of  Durham  Castle 

The  cathedral  of  Durham 249 

Beside  the  ancient  Roman  Wall 

The  town-gate  of  dismal  Alnwick Q56 


X ILLUSTRATIONS 

FACING 

The  sweeping  stretch  of  Flodden  Field  page 

The  stone  guardsmen  on  Ahiwick  Castle  walls 

The  Till  by  Twizel  Bridge 

Kirk  Yetholm,  the  mountain  village  of  the  old-time  gypsies  .       .     257 

The  ancient  peel  tower  at  Melrose 

A  garden  by  a  lonely  tower   .       .       .     , 264t 

The  tower  of  Smailholm 

Grim   old    Tantallon 265 

The  sunny  ruins  of  Craigmillar 

Far  up  the  hill  toward  Stirling  Castle 272 

Where  Charles  the  First  was  born 

The    St.    Andrews    golf    links 273 

Rose-bowered   Scotch  cottages 

The   Birnam   Wood   of   Macbeth 280 

In  the  pass  of  Killiecrankie 

A  family  of  trampers 281 

At  the  Roman  camp  near  Fortingal 

A  Highland  cottage  with  one  thatched  chimney 288 

By  the  ruins  of  Rob  Roy's  cottage 

On  the  road  beside  Loch  Lomond 289 

The  banks  and  braes  of  bonnie  Doon 

"Flow   gently,   sweet   Afton" 308 

Maxwellton  House,  the  home  of  Annie  Laurie 

The  old  toll-house,  Gretna  Green,  at  the  Scotch-English  border  line    309 

A  mountain  road  near  Derwent  Water 

Looking  across  Thirlmere  at  Helvellyn -    324 

At  delightful  Rydal  Water 

The  home  of  John  Ruskin  on  Coniston  Water 325 

The  Desormais  gateway  of  Skipton  Castle 

The  ancient  stepping  stones   at   Bolton   Abbey 328 

The  home  of  the  Brontes,  beside  the  Haworth  churchyard 

The  moorland  vale  of  Alcomdene 329 

Under  the  oaks  of  Sherwood  Forest 

A  part  of  the  Duke  of  Portland's  palace,  where  a  garden  masks 

subterranean  rooms 336 

The  home  of  the  famous  Bess  of  Hardwick 

A  place  which  remains  a  wistful  memory:  Haddon  Hall  .       .       .     337 


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TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 


CHAPTER  I 

WHAT  WE  DID 

WE  had  anticipated  much,  but  it  was  so  infi- 
nitely beyond  anticipation!  For  it  was  a 
royal  summer.  It  was  six  weeks  of  superb 
liberty,  six  weeks  of  kaleidoscopic  paradise.  Each 
day  was  a  dream  that  every  day  proved  true.  And  it 
was  all  so  feasible,  so  practicable,  so  easily  done. 

It  was  six  weeks  of  motoring,  and  of  so  motoring 
as  to  get  at  the  very  heart  and  essence  of  England 
and  Scotland  and  Wales. 

It  would  have  been  easy  to  go  at  random,  but  it 
was  not  difficult  so  to  arrange  as  to  secure  maximum 
of  interest  with  minimum  of  distance  and  expense. 
We  planned  for  a  total  of  almost  three  thousand 
miles,  with  an  average  of  seventy-five  miles  a  day, 
and  in  those  three  thousand  miles  we  obtained  as 
much  as  could  have  come  from  any  random  five  thou- 
sand miles  or  even  ten,  for  in  the  three  were  included 
every  variety  of  scenery,  every  variety  of  castled  and 
churchly  charm,  the  towers,  the  cottages,  the  stately 
homes,  the  places  of  historical  and  literary  note.  And 
all  was  done  so  reasonably,  with  entire  absence  of  pro- 
hibitive expense.  We  tasted  the  full  flavor  of  all 
three  lands.  There  was  no  waste  of  time,  nor  was 
there  omission  of  anything  essential. 

Nor  was  there  undue  haste.    At  some  places,  such 


2 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

as  Oxford  and  Melrose,  there  was  leisurely  lingering, 
and  always  there  were  stops  where  there  was  some 
special  view  to  enjoy,  some  special  castle  or  tower  or 
battlefield  to  see;  and  alternating  with  these  pauses, 
packed  full  as  they  were  of  the  glory  of  history  or 
of  nature,  were  long  and  steady  flights  beside  quiet 
rivers  and  through  long  valleys,  and  past  great  farms 
and  hills  and  meadows,  and  across  great  moors. 

And  there  were  times  when,  instead  of  pausing,  we 
went  on  past  some  mighty  castle,  some  rock-perched 
tower,  some  shimmering  stretch  of  beauty,  gaining 
in  those  swift  moments  a  superb  vision  that  would 
remain  a  glorious  memory  forever. 

And  for  the  practical  detail  of  arrangement  we  hit 
upon  a  new  and  ideal  way. 

We  had  found  that  to  rent  a  car  would  cost  twenty 
dollars  a  day ;  and  that  to  ship  our  own,  even  though 
it  was  but  a  small-size  touring-car,  would  cost  two 
hundred  and  fifty  dollars  for  ocean  freight  alone, 
even  without  any  shipment  by  rail;  or  that,  if  the 
sum  were  to  be  shaded  at  all,  it  could  only  be  by  an 
impossible  personal  supervision  of  handling  and 
crating. 

And  then  came  the  solution;  and  it  was  the  idea 
of  both  buying  and  selling  a  car  in  England. 

An  English  house  was  written  and  prices  learned, 
and  next  and  naturally  came  the  simple  American 
expedient  of  advertising.  A  little  notice  that  a  car, 
new  except  for  a  three  thousand  miles'  run,  would 
be  ready  to  turn  over  to  someone  in  Liverpool  about 
July  15,  secured  a  number  of  replies,  and  an  arrange- 
ment was  readily  made.  And  instead  of  assuming 
all  the  trouble  and  risk  and  expense  of  shipping,  and 
then  having  the  wear  and  tear  upon  our  own  car  and 
its  tires,  our  car  was  left  at  home,  and  a  new  car 
was  bought  and  was  delivered  to  us  upon  our  arrival 
in  England  in  May,  ready  for  the  tour. 


WHAT  WE  DID 8 

We  in  turn  were  to  resign  it  to  the  new  purchaser, 
in  July,  *'  in  such  condition  as  would  naturally  be 
expected  after  a  trip  of  three  thousand  miles,"  as 
the  agreement  expressed  it,  with  a  provision  to  cover 
any  accident  that  meant  wreckage;  and  we  were  to 
be  paid  within  one  hundred  and  seventy-five  dollars 
of  the  initial  purchase  price. 

Thus  the  car  was  both  bought  and  sold  before  we 
saw  it ;  before  we  even  left  our  home ! 

We  were  a  party  of  four,  for  companionship,  help- 
fulness and  division  of  expense;  and  we  found  at  the 
end  of  the  tour  that  the  total  traveling  expenses, 
beginning  with  the  one  hundred  and  seventy-five 
dollars  and  adding  for  gasoline  and  oil,  were  just 
about  equal  to  what  the  expenses  of  the  same  dis- 
tance would  have  been  for  four  people  by  rail,  by 
the  cheapest  of  third  class,  and  very  much  less  than 
the  distance  would  have  cost  by  railway  traveling  at 
anything  better  than  the  uncomfortable  and  almost 
impossible  third  class,  even  without  adding  the  neces- 
sary frequent  items  of  cabs  and  porterage. 

And  how  infinitely  more  was  seen!  For  by  motor 
car  we  went  to  many  and  many  a  point  that  no  rail- 
way reaches,  and  every  day  the  motor  made  us  a 
hundredfold  richer  than  the  train  could  have  done, 
in  positive  happiness,  in  the  joy  of  life,  in  the  pleas- 
ure and  profit  of  it  all.  For  there  were  no  long  rides, 
cooped  up  in  little  compartments,  to  reach  objective 
points — for  every  moment  we  were  at  an  objective 
point!  There  was  no  hurrying  away  unsatisfied  to 
catch  a  train,  nor  was  there  ever  an  enforced  waiting 
when  curiosity  was  exhausted.  We  stopped  where 
we  wished  and  went  on  when  we  chose.  We  were 
literally  masters  of  time. 

The  license  for  the  car,  and  the  individual  licenses 
to  run  a  car,  so  that  the  two  men  of  the  party  could 
relieve  each  other  at  the  wheel,  were  arranged  for 


i TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

in  advance,  by  mail,  readily  and  without  delay.  For 
England  welcomes  Americans,  and  whatever  path  is 
chosen  makes  that  path  easy.  All  possible  difficulties 
vanished  into  nothingness  when  approached. 

A  membership  was  taken  out,  for  a  nominal  sum, 
in  one  of  the  great  British  automobile  clubs,  and  it 
more  than  repaid  in  actual  service  and  vastly  more 
in  the  sense  of  potential  security  that  it  gave.  And 
we  and  the  car  were  insured,  and  at  a  reasonable  cost, 
and  that  too  was  a  bulwark  behind  us. 

From  Manchester  into  North  Wales,  then  back 
into  western  England,  always  aiming  for  the  scenes 
of  greatest  note  or  beauty — thus  the  delightful  jour- 
ney delightfully  began.  Through  Devon,  and  enough 
to  the  far  westward  to  taste  of  the  charm  of  Cornwall 
we  motored  on,  and  thence  swept,  by  splendid  zigzags, 
from  point  to  point  across  southern  England  to  dis- 
tant Canterbury,  whence  we  turned  toward  London. 
From  London  we  went  by  way  of  Hampton  Court 
and  Windsor  to  Oxford  and  Stratford,  thence  swung 
over  to  old  Peterborough  and  there  turned  north- 
ward again  to  Boston  and  York  and  Durham  and  on 
through  the  castled  bleakness  of  Northumberland. 
Into  Scotland  next,  and  to  regally  placed  Edin- 
burgh, and  up  through  the  very  heart  of  the  High- 
lands, with  lochs  and  mountains  and  narrow  passes 
and  stern  and  splendid  beauty.  Through  Glasgow 
and  down  into  England  again  to  taste  of  the  fine 
beauty  and  memorable  charm  of  the  Lake  Country — 
thence  to  the  mighty  moors  of  Yorkshire — and  then, 
and  finally,  a  dip  down  to  the  Dukeries  and  to  Had- 
don  Hall,  marvelous  in  its  age  and  its  beauty  and 
its  perennial  charm,  and  thence  to  Liverpool  and  the 
end. 

The  success  of  the  entire  tour,  a  success  complete 
in  every  detail,  was  due  in  the  first  place  to  a  careful 
planning;  and  yet  a  planning  neither  rigid  nor  in- 


WHAT  WE  DID 


flexible;  and,  in  the  second  place,  to  the  constant 
recognition  of  the  very  simple  fact  that  we  were 
motoring  to  see  Great  Britain  and  not  to  compare 
Great  Britain  with  America.  Now  and  then  some- 
what of  comparison  was  inevitable,  but  it  did  not  mat- 
ter to  us  in  the  least  that  the  Thames  is  not  so  wide 
as  the  Mississippi  or  that  the  Eildons  are  not  so  lofty 
as  Pike's  Peak ;  it  was  enough  that  the  Thames  flows 
out  of  illimitable  history  and  that  the  splendid  Eildons 
brood  ov^r  a  region  of  immortal  romance. 

We  had  been  much  in  England  before  and  this  as- 
sisted us  greatly  in  planning  our  route  to  the  best 
advantage,  but  day  by  day  in  the  course  of  our  jour- 
neyings  we  realized  how  slight  is  even  a  very  con- 
siderable knowledge  of  a  country  compared  with  the 
both  broad  and  intimate  knowledge  that  comes  to 
those  who  go  by  motor  car.  But  we  never  let  the  fact 
that  we  had  already  seen  a  place  keep  us  away  from 
it  on  the  motor  tour,  if  it  were  a  place  that  deserved 
to  be  included. 

And  when  the  six  weeks  were  over  we  looked  back, 
in  vivid  memory,  over  long,  long  rides  under  the 
summer  sun,  and  hours  of  mist  and  rain,  through 
which  towers  and  hills  loomed  in  vague  and  indis- 
tinct allurement,  and  morning  starts  while  still  the 
dew  lay  thick  on  the  lush  grass,  and  of  going  on  and 
on  into  long  and  lingering  twilights,  of  stopping  by 
the  wayside  to  talk  with  some  cottager  or  in  ancient 
towns  to  see  the  glories  of  some  venerable  cathedral, 
or  turning  down  some  mysterious  lane  to  follow  the 
lure  of  exploration  or  of  sheer  adventure. 


CHAPTER  II 

THE  START 

WE  like  to  think  that  we  began  at  Cranford, 
for  Cranford  was  so  near  the  actual  begin- 
ning of  the  tour  and  is  so  full  of  interest 
as  the  town  in  which  is  located  one  of  the 
finest  of  all  English  stories.  One  can  never  forget 
the  sweet  charm  of  Miss  Matty,  one  can  never  for- 
get her  sister  and  all  the  other  Cranford  ladies,  and 
therefore  it  is  that  such  interest  attaches  to  the  town 
itself  in  being  Cranford — although  it  may  be  well  to 
say  that  it  is  not  set  down  as  Cranford  in  the  gaz- 
etteers, but  as  Knutsf ord ;  which  is  obviously  unwise, 
for  the  association  of  the  Miss  Jenkyns's,  Mrs.  Jamie- 
son  and  Miss  Pole  with  the  place  is  of  far  more 
importance  than  the  visionary  connection  with  the 
past  which  makes  it  Canute's  Ford,  that  is  to  say, 
Knutsf  ord,  because  that  king  once  crossed  the  river 
here!  Typical,  this,  of  the  devotion  of  the  English 
to  royalty  and  even  to  distant  royalty.  A  king,  many 
centuries  ago,  crossed  a  river  and  therefore  the  place 
where  he  crossed  must  forever  be  Knutsf  ord!  But 
Mrs.  Gaskell  knew  better  than  that  and  gave  it  the 
name  of  Cranford,  and  as  Cranford  it  will  forever  be 
remembered  by  all  who  love  sweetness  and  charm  and 
clear  and  kindly  visualization  of  character  and  life. 

And  so  we  like  to  think  that  we  began  at  Knuts- 
ford.  But  strict  literalness  reminds  us  that  we  actu- 
ally began  at  a  less  interesting  place,  Manchester; 
and,  if  ill-natured  about  it,  we  might  suggest  that, 
after  all,  the  place  of  beginning  is  the  place  to  get 

6 


THE  START 


quickly  away  from  and  leave  farther  and  farther  be- 
hind; and  yet  we  do  not  feel  that  way  about  Man- 
chester, for  although  it  is  not  attractive  from  a  tourist 
standpoint,  it  is  interesting  in  that  it  is  one  of  the  few 
great  British  cities.  Yet  here,  again,  one  meets  with 
surprises,  for,  although  London  itself  is  so  immensely 
large,  Manchester  has  not  much  over  seven  hundred 
thousand  population,  and  Liverpool  is  not  much 
larger,  and  Glasgow,  which  comes  next  to  London, 
is  also  under  the  eight  hundred  thousand! 

But  Manchester  has  really  a  very  considerable  de- 
gree of  interest  to  an  American,  for  her  growth  has 
been  like  that  of  an  American  city.  Her  seven  hun- 
dred thousand  people  were  less  than  ten  thousand  two 
centuries  ago  and  barely  a  single  hundred  thousand 
just  a  century  ago.  Manufacturing,  and  in  particu- 
lar cotton  manufacturing,  in  Manchester  itself  and 
the  tributary  neighborhood  round  about,  has  done  this 
thing;  and  an  English  city  that  can  grow  with  the 
swiftness  of  one  of  America  assuredly  possesses 
claims  to  observation. 

Great,  black,  sooty  place  that  it  is,  with  an  aston- 
ishing congestedness  of  population,  its  streets  are 
thronged  with  people  and  vehicles,  and  there  are  even 
enormous  clumsy  tandem  traction-engines,  with  enor- 
mous trailers,  weaving  their  ruthless  and  sluggish 
way  through  the  narrowest  and  busiest  streets.  And 
there  are  great  tandem  teams  threading  through  the 
traffic,  and  there  are  motor  cars  moving  with  a  swift- 
ness that  seems  quite  disregardful  of  pedestrians,  and 
even  of  passengers  alighting  from  stopped  tram-cars, 
there  being  no  kindly  rule  as  to  not  passing  cars 
while  passengers  are  getting  off.  In  fact,  one  comes 
to  learn,  in  England,  that  the  rights  of  the  individual 
mean  those  of  the  individual  who  motors  or  drives, 
when  there  is  any  conflict  between  his  rights  and 
those  of  the  people  who  walk.    But  we  were  given  a 


8 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

friendly  warning  that  an  exception  might  be  made 
when  the  driver  happened  to  be  an  American  and  that 
it  therefore  behooved  any  American  motoring  to  go 
with  especial  care. 

The  best  thing  about  Manchester  is  its  air  of  self- 
respect  and  prosperity;  and,  as  one  learns  later  that 
this  aspect  is  not  customary  in  the  large  cities  of 
England,  it  is  well  to  remember  that  Manchester  is 
the  center  of  Lancashire,  and  that  Lancashire,  of  all 
the  counties  of  England,  distributes  its  land  among 
the  greatest  proportionate  number  of  owners ;  an  im- 
portant thing,  this,  as  one  comes  in  time  to  realize. 

Manchester  folk  are  proud  of  the  appellation 
"  Manchester  man,"  which  was  long  ago  used  by  Liv- 
erpool rather  contemptuously  in  contrast  with  "  Liv- 
erpool gentleman  ";  and  they  are  proud  of  their  big 
town-hall,  expensive  and  ornate  as  it  is,  in  that  style, 
beloved  of  the  modern  English,  which  may  be  termed 
Victorian-Gothic.  And  this  town-hall  represents  all 
the  good  old  English  ideas,  including  that  of  the 
lavish  hospitality  of  the  lord  mayor's  banquets,  served 
with  wealth  of  civic  silver:  solid  silver  platters,  huge 
and  plethoric,  and  endless  entree  dishes,  and  silver 
epergnes  in  numberless  quantity  for  decorating  the 
great  tables  in  the  great  town-hall  banqueting  hall, 
to  which  the  liveried  waiters  proudly  bear  the  steam- 
ing viands  from  the  great  town-hall  kitchens.  You 
see,  municipal  government  is  taken  seriously  in 
Manchester! 

A  great  deal  of  business  is  done  there,  and  done 
profitably,  and  yet  the  telephone  service  (govern- 
ment owned!)  is  so  poor  that  we  found,  and  this  is 
literal  and  not  a  jest,  that  time  was  saved  by  hanging 
up  the  receiver  and  getting  a  cab  or  tram.  And  we 
were  even  told  that  the  banks,  for  all  their  huge  busi- 
ness, do  not  use  adding  machines :  "  If  any  of  us  used 
such  a  thing,"  said  a  business  man,  in  all  seriousness. 


i  '  i 


LiIlL,fc^ 


A    DELIGHTFUL    HALT    BESIDE    A    BoRDER    CASTLE 


At  ak  ideal  inx  of  Elizabethan  days 


K'^^^i^uM.JIItf' 


THE  START 


**  we  should  have  the  columns  footed  up  afterwards 
with  a  pencil  to  see  if  they  were  right." 

Even  in  modern  Manchester  there  is  something  of 
the  old;  and  first  there  is  the  cathedral;  an  excellent 
structure,  though  far  from  being  of  the  first  order  of 
cathedral  beauty;  and  yet,  as  we  entered,  we  realized 
a  fine  and  unusual  charm  in  the  coloring  of  the  inte- 
rior, for  wood  and  stone  and  the  very  shadows  were 
all  in  a  softness  of  nutty  brown ;  it  was  all  in  the  col- 
ors of  an  etching.  And  we  were  shown  the  build- 
ing by  one  of  the  clergy,  who  imparted  his  appre- 
ciative knowledge  of  it  in  such  a  way  as  to  make 
the  place  very  distinctly  worth  while;  for  every 
traveler  comes  to  realize  that  a  place  of  lesser  interest 
may  be  so  seen  as  to  make  it  surpass  the  place  of 
greater  interest  in  keenness  of  pleasure  and  vividness 
of  impression. 

In  the  very  shadow  of  the  cathedral,  in  the  very 
heart  of  the  city's  murk  and  soot  and  beside  a  black 
little  river,  is  one  of  the  most  quaintly  interesting  old 
buildings,  or  rather  set  of  buildings,  in  all  England. 
For  you  are  down  in  the  busiest  part  of  the  city,  with 
only  the  hemmed-in  and  murk-darkened  cathedral  to 
remind  you  that  there  could  be  anything  there  not 
connected  with  the  thunder  and  congestion  of  trade, 
and  you  open  a  door  in  a  high  wall  that  seems  to 
inclose  some  factory;  and  you  have  felicitously 
opened  into  past  centuries.  For  here  is  an  ancient 
school,  retaining  its  setting  of  charm,  seclusion,  de- 
lightfulness,  beauty. 

Two  and  a  half  centuries  ago  the  school  was 
founded,  and  it  was  established  in  buildings  which 
even  at  that  time  were  two  hundred  and  fifty  years 
old;  an  ancient  ecclesiastical  foundation;  and  there 
are  rambling  old  passages  and  enchanting  casement 
windows,  diamond-paned  and  leaded,  and  a  beauti- 
ful ancient  library,  in  polished  and  age-black  oak, 


10 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

with  fascinating  nooks  and  corners  and  delightful 
outlooks  into  interior  courts;  and  the  rooms  and 
courts  and  passages  are  sparely  pervaded  by  blue- 
coat  boys,  inheritors  of  the  shadows  and  seclusion 
and  learning  of  that  ancient  school;  and  how  many 
generations  there  have  been  of  frank-faced  boys  clad 
in  the  quaint,  long-coated  suits  of  blue  broadcloth  and 
with  silver  buckles  on  their  shoes!  The  place  is  one 
of  peculiar  interest,  for  the  charm  of  the  unexpected 
adds  itself  to  the  charm  intrinsic. 

We  looked  over  Manchester  while  the  very  neces- 
sary speedometer  was  being  attached  and  the  motor 
run  with  the  car  at  a  standstill  for  two  hours  with  the 
intent  of  relieving  the  stiffness  sure  to  be  in  any  new 
motor,  and  while  the  luggage  carrier,  which  had  been 
ordered  by  letter  and  was  ready  for  putting  on  at  the 
back,  was  adjusted,  to  hold  our  American  motor  rain- 
proof trunk,  inclosing  two  broad  suitcases — ^much 
larger  and  lighter  than  ordinary  suitcases — which 
could  be  withdrawn  nightly  without  disturbing  the 
black,  patent-leather,  rainproof  trunk-shell. 

Resides  these  we  had  two  leather  bags,  which  were 
carried  with  us  in  the  car  in  the  seat  or  at  our  feet; 
there  being  just  room  for  them;  and  two  umbrellas, 
which  we  never  once  opened ! — but  that  was  only  good 
fortune.  For  London  needs  we  sent  somewhat  of 
luggage  in  advance  to  meet  us,  and  from  time  to  time 
sent  laundry  in  advance  to  be  ready  and  waiting  for 
us  at  some  point  where  we  knew  we  should  stop.  We 
even  sent  our  steamer  clothes  in  leather  bags,  to  be 
held  at  the  railway  station  at  the  port  of  departure, 
and  got  a  receipt  for  them! — a  feat  not  easy  to  ac- 
complish in  England. 

One  result  of  having  a  baggage  carrier  at  the  back 
— or  perhaps  we  should  adhere  to  the  words  "  lug- 
gage carrier,"  and  be  English  while  in  England — was 
that  it  put  us  from  the  chance  of  carrying  even  a 


THE  START 11 

single  extra  tire  where  an  extra  tire  would  naturally 
be  fastened  on,  for  it  was  not  a  car  that  would  lend 
itself  with  readiness  to  having  a  tire  at  the  side.  We 
hesitated  a  little ;  but  needs  must  when  lack  of  space 
drives;  and  so  it  was  decided  to  start  off  on  our  jaunt 
without  a  spare  tire,  for  it  seemed  likely  that,  should 
we  need  one,  we  should  never,  after  all,  be  at  a  very 
great  distance  from  some  source  of  supply.  We 
risked  somewhat  of  delay  and  inconvenience  rather 
than  overcrowd  ourselves.  With  the  tools  under  the 
seat,  we  carried  two  extra  inner  tubes,  but  even  this 
precaution,  so  it  turned  out,  was  unnecessary,  for 
when  the  entire  journey  was  at  an  end  we  had  never 
found  any  necessity  for  either  of  these  tubes,  nor  had 
we  needed  an  extra  tire.  Luck  was  a  factor,  and  care, 
but  principally  it  was  the  perfection  of  the  English 
roads.  A  gallon  can  of  lubricating  oil  found  a  wood- 
wedged  abiding-place  under  the  hood  beside  the  mo- 
tor, where  it  could  besmirch  no  clothes. 

And  so,  late  in  a  late  May  afternoon,  we  spun  out  of 
Manchester  along  an  octopus-tentacle  sort  of  high- 
road that  dangled  off  for  miles,  and  we  finally  got 
clear  of  the  city  and  were  in  the  country  roads  and 
headed  for  Cranford;  the  air  was  a  caress;  and  we 
ran  by  stone  walls,  and  hawthorn  hedges  with  blos- 
soms pink  or  white,  and  great  fine  trees  and  little 
villages.  It  was  eight  miles  to  Altrincham;  it  was 
five  miles  more  to  Mere  Corner,  where,  so  the  map 
showed,  we  were  to  leave  the  main  road  and  turn 
to  the  left — and  it  was  pleasant  to  feel  that  we  were 
to  have  such  a  quaint-named  turning-point  on  our 
very  first  run. 

Our  first  night  was  to  be  at  Cranford,  and  this  brief 
late-afternoon  run  was  but  preliminary.  For  we  were 
really  to  begin  at  Cranford,  and  there  was  piquancy 
in  the  prospect! 

And  there  was  piquancy  in  the  realization.     For 


12 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

Cranford  is  still  a  delightful  old  place,  set  agreeably 
on  a  riverside  with  bits  of  the  water  glimpsed  down 
the  narrow  cross-streets,  and  it  has  much  of  the  pleas- 
ant old-fashioned  simplicity  which  made  it,  in  a  book, 
a  town  to  love.  There  are  still  the  little  houses,  and 
the  little  bowed  windows,  and  the  lupines  and  the 
wall-flowers  in  the  gardens ;  there  are  still  the  gently- 
winding  narrow  streets  and  lanes,  there  are  peacef ul- 
ness  and  a  general  quietness  of  atmosphere  and  the 
people  are  still  busy  with  petty  things;  there  is  still 
the  sound  of  clogs  upon  the  stone-paved  ways ;  there 
are  still  the  tiny  little  shops,  comfit  shops  and  green- 
grocer shops,  and  flower  and  seed  shops,  and  little 
pork  shops  where  the  bacon  hangs  in  halves  from 
head  to  hind  hoof;  there  are  still  the  little  two- 
wheeled  delivery  carts;  there  are  still  the  old  court- 
yards and  passages,  and  you  still  may  see  tidy,  little 
old  ladies  come  stepping  out  over  their  tidy,  little 
sunken  doormats.  And  if  you  see  a  chimney-sweep 
going  to  work,  proverbially  black,  with  black  and 
sooty  clothes  and  tools — we  saw  one  in  the  early 
morning,  giving  thus  an  impression  of  not  having 
abandoned  his  blackness  even  on  the  preceding  night ! 
— if  you  see  a  chimney-sweep  going  to  work,  it  is 
another  of  the  old-time  survivals,  and  if  he  goes  to 
work  riding  on  a  bicycle,  as  this  one  did,  it  is  but  one 
of  the  cases  in  which  modern  improvement  makes  for 
swifter  progress;  and  it  is  gently  amusing.  Mrs. 
Gaskell  would  have  put  such  a  chimney-sweep  into 
her  book. 

And  there  is  here  and  there  a  doorway  or  ^vindow 
or  gabled  corner  of  real  charm  and  beauty;  on  the 
way  to  Darkness  Lane  one  passes  a  little  row  of 
tiny,  ancient  white-and-black- fronted  houses;  and 
there  are  also  old-fashioned  inns,  including  the  very 
one  at  which  Lord  Mauleverer  aristocratically  stayed, 
and  it  stands  right  upon  the  street,  with  the  cobble- 


THE  START 13 

stones  coming  to  its  very  door ;  an  inn  where  there  are 
excellent  service  and  immaculate  cleanliness,  an  inn 
with  beamed  ceilings,  with  little  spraddly  bouquets  of 
old-fashioned  flowers  placed  upon  the  little  tables  in 
the  dining-room,  an  inn  where  there  is  still  a  "  boots  " 
in  his  green  apron  and  where  they  will  serve  you  chops 
an  inch  thick,  with  green  peas;  a  posting  inn,  this, 
with  a  good  old  courtyard  in  behind,  coming  down 
from  posting  and  coaching  days;  a  courtyard  doubt- 
less easy  for  horses,  but  offering  certain  difiiculties 
in  the  manipulation  of  a  motor  car  into  shelter,  it 
being  necessary  to  make  numerous  turnings  through 
attenuated  passages  and  around  short  bends;  an  inn 
itself  full  of  passageways  and  stairways  in  inex- 
tricable convolutions;  an  inn  of  peacefulness,  where 
in  the  evening  you  are  given  a  private  sitting-room 
with  a  blazing  coal  fire,  very  attractive  and  comfort- 
able toward  the  end  of  May,  and  where  you  wake  in 
the  morning  and  look  down  over  the  flower  boxes  on 
the  window-sill  into  the  narrow  street  and  see  little 
girls  going  to  the  little  comfit  shops  with  their  pen- 
nies. That  is  one  thing  about  Cranford — you  get  a 
general  impression  that  things  are  little! 

Cranford  itself — that  is  to  say,  the  people  of  Cran- 
ford— take  their  fame  as  the  home  of  Miss  Matty 
and  her  friends  with  a  calm  that  is  almost  indiffer- 
ence ;  in  fact,  they  seldom  think  of  those  most  precise 
and  pleasant  ladies  and  frankly  are  but  little  inter- 
ested. Were  it  otherwise,  they  would  be  spoiled  by 
overconsciousness,  they  would  lose  their  artless  sim- 
plicity and  the  place  would  become  a  village  devoted 
to  Mrs.  Gaskell  instead  of  to  her  immortal  creations. 
And  so  it  is  better  as  it  is,  for  the  town  remains 
unspoiled  Cranford. 

And  the  fine  old  church  of  mellowed  brick,  with 
trimmings  of  time-grayed  stone,  still  stands,  in  its 
setting  between  the  two  long  streets  of  the  town,  on 


14 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

a  level  with  one  and  perched  attractively  above  the 
other;  a  church  with  ivy  and  clipped  holly  massed 
green  against  its  sides,  and  with  a  low,  square  tower, 
and  with  a  grassy  graveyard  beside  it  that  is  dotted 
everywhere  with  daffodils  and  whose  paths  are  all 
a-blossom  with  iris  and  wall-flowers,  and  with  an 
ancient  urn-shaped  sundial  set  in  the  middle  of  the 
graves  as  if  futilely  to  mark  the  passing  time  for  the 
forever  quiet  sleepers  round  about. 

We  motored  quietly  about  the  long  but  little  town ; 
somehow,  everything  is  still  done  quietly  and  deco- 
rously in  Cranford;  and  at  one  end  of  the  town  we 
found  a  great  private  park,  typically  lovely,  entered 
through  a  beautiful  classic  gateway,  and  at  the  oppo- 
site end  of  the  town,  on  a  gentle  slope,  an  ivy-clad 
building,  hawthorn  shaded  and  romantic,  with  ex- 
quisite latticed  windows,  and  with  soft,  yellow 
laburnum-trees  lushly  in  bloom  all  about  it.  A  little 
chapel  this,  although  it  does  not  look  like  a  chapel, 
and  on  the  hillside,  beside  it,  among  other  flat  and 
sun-warmed  stones,  all  covered  with  moss  and  shaded 
by  flowers  and  shrubs,  we  saw  the  stone  that  marks 
the  lonely  resting-place  of  the  woman  who  wrote  the 
story  of  Cranford. 

And  we  were  glad  that  we  had  chosen  such  a  town 
as  the  place  to  call  our  starting-point,  and  from  Cran- 
ford we  went  forth  to  the  exploration  of  England, 
with  every  mile  and  every  moment  of  our  journey 
opening  up  new  horizons. 


CHAPTER  III 

INTO  WALES 

WE  started  late,  for  we  were  not  eager  to  leave 
Knutsford  too  soon,  and  we  went  on  under 
the  cool,  clear  sky  of  a  cool,  clear  day.  We 
lunched  in  a  shady  spot  by  the  roadside,  the  first  of  a 
long,  long  line  of  lovely  luncheons  out  of  doors ;  and 
again  we  went  on  our  way.  We  passed  motorcycles, 
many  of  them  with  side  cars  for  a  second  passenger, 
and  we  passed  a  dean,  as  fat  and  solemn  as  a  butler, 
cycling  in  a  flat  silk  hat;  and  there  were  birds  sing- 
ing in  the  great  oaks  and  elms  and  in  the  green 
and  mossy-boled  beeches,  and  there  were  estates  lined 
by  walls  or  hedges  and  one  had  a  wall  fully  eight 
feet  high  running  for  miles. 

We  were  on  our  way  to  Chester,  and  for  the  first 
few  miles  we  followed  a  short-cut  road  out  of  Kjiuts- 
f ord  that  was  so  bad  from  an  English  standpoint  that 
our  motor  map  did  not  even  mark  it!  But  we  felt 
our  way  experimentally  into  it  and  found  it  of  a 
smooth  excellence. 

We  came  up  with  one  of  the  automobile  associa- 
tion patrol,  bicycle  mounted  and  uniformed  in  mus- 
tard and  blue,  with  bedford-cord  breeches  and  natty 
puttees  and  the  "  AA  "  brass  emblem  on  his  sleeve. 
We  carried  the  "  A  A  "  emblem  on  the  front  of  our 
car,  and  it  is  customary  and  advisable  to  do  this,  so 
that  any  one  of  the  patrol,  who  are  scattered  all  over 
Great  Britain,  can  see  that  a  member's  car  is  ap- 
proaching and  warn  him  of  speed  traps,  fresh-tarred 
roads  or  any  other  danger  or  inconvenience. 

15 


16 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAUST 

We  were  on  our  way  to  Chester,  because  that  city 
lay  on  the  route  to  northern  Wales,  and  we  went 
there,  although  it  is  one  of  the  places  to  which  all 
tourists  tend.  For  from  the  first,  while  feeling  to 
the  full  the  privilege  of  finding  the  places  that  are 
little  visited,  the  stretches  of  countryside  that  are  un- 
known to  tourists,  the  villages  and  streams  and  hills 
and  towers  that  are  never  seen  by  those  who  go  by 
ordinary  rail,  we  would  not  avoid  the  interesting 
places  which  are  widely  known.  We  were  to  explore 
a  comprehensive  England,  and  Chester  has  so  much 
of  interest  that  we  would  not  willingly  have  missed 
it  even  had  it  not  been  so  directly  on  our  road. 

The  people  of  Chester  so  take  it  for  granted  that 
visitors  will  go  there,  and  have  always  gone  there, 
that  it  is  matter  of  firm  belief,  or  at  least  they  make 
themselves  believe  that  they  believe  it,  that  King 
Harold  was  not  actually  killed  at  the  Battle  of  Hast- 
ings, but,  realizing  that  he  was  hopelessly  defeated, 
fled  from  the  field  and  to  Chester  and  stayed  there 
in  retirement  till  death.  For  where,  they  would  ask, 
could  he  find  a  more  restful  and  delightful  place  of 
sojourn?  It  rather  militates  against  the  story  of 
Harold,  however,  that  there  has  always  been  satisfac- 
tory evidence  of  his  death  in  battle,  and  that  nothing 
is  more  certain  than  that  William  the  Conqueror 
would  definitely  see  that  he  was  dead.  But  such  a 
story  cannot  have  and  does  not  demand  verification; 
the  very  existence  of  such  immemorial  traditions 
shows  that  some  very  great  mysterious  stranger  really 
did  come  incognito  to  Chester,  and  his  actual  identity 
long  ago  became  naturally  a  matter  for  romance. 

Chester  still  possesses  its  ancient  walls,  with  memo- 
ries stretching  back  as  far  as  Roman  days,  for  some 
of  the  sections  are  built  upon  Roman  foundations ;  but 
the  place  has  long  outgrown  these  walls  and  they  run 
principally  through  the  present  city  instead  of  around 


iiK  m  iiii 


Half-timbered  cottages  iv   Darkness  I^ake 


The  sun^dial  of  Cranford  churchyard 


A    FIXE    DOORWAY    IN    OLD    CrANFORD 


Entrance  to  a  privatj;  park  at  Cranford 


INTO  WALES 17 

it.  It  is  pleasant  to  go  motoring  through  an  ancient 
gateway,  and  to  stop  the  car  and  climb  the  steps  to 
the  battlements,  and  get  unexpected  views  into  de- 
lightful gardens,  where  there  is  exquisite  turf,  and 
vines  thick  with  innumerable  flowers,  yellow  and 
white  and  pink,  and  where  the  vicar's  daughter  is 
playing  tennis  with  a  curate;  and  then,  for  contrast, 
to  look  down  into  the  busily  thronged  streets.  And 
the  wall  is  of  particular  interest  through  being  rich  in 
homely  memories  pointing  out  that  the  great  days 
of  the  past  were  not  alone  of  knights  and  nobles,  for 
the  bakers,  the  saddlers  and  other  town  guilds  had 
their  appointed  places  on  the  towers  and  on  the  walls, 
and  always  guarded  them. 

The  age  of  chivalry  included,  in  Chester,  all 
classes,  and  the  forms  of  ancient  chivalry  came  down 
to  almost  modern  days,  for  one  of  the  prisoners  cap- 
tured at  a  battle  fought  within  sight  of  these  very 
walls,  in  the  Cromwell  war,  was  a  captain  of  the 
Queen's  Troop,  and,  just  as  if  from  the  pages  of  a 
novel  instead  of  in  grim  fact,  he  was  wearing  a  scarf 
that  the  queen  had  personally  given  him  that  he 
might  wear  her  colors. 

There  is  a  cathedral  of  Chester:  a  structure  that 
would  seem  extraordinary  if  there  were  not  so  many 
cathedrals  even  more  beautiful.  And  one  of  the 
things  which  each  traveler  must  settle  for  himself  is, 
to  what  class  of  things  he  will  devote  his  time  and 
how  much  of  his  time.  A  motorist  finds  that  appre- 
ciation is  possible  and  delightful  without  minutiae  of 
inspection  and  also  where  to  economize  in  mental 
superlatives.  There  are  more  than  thirty  cathedrals 
in  Great  Britain;  thirty-four  seems  to  be  the  precise 
number,  but  even  high  English  authorities  differ, 
which  is  certainly  diverting  enough;  and  to  devote  a 
long  time  to  each  cathedral  would  make  it  impossible 
to  devote  time  to  anything  else;  to  study  the  thirty- 


18 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

four  would  alone  be  a  long  summer's  occupation! 
And  so  we  decided  to  economize  somewhat  with 
cathedrals. 

But  we  endeavored  not  to  pass  anything  of  par- 
ticular interest  or  import;  and  so  here  in  Chester 
Cathedral  we  followed  an  official  guide — one  ought 
always  to  take  a  guide  at  a  cathedral,  for  he  can 
open  the  otherwise  unopenable  and  point  out  many 
things  that  a  visitor  could  not  but  miss,  and  a  good 
guide  is  far  above  rubies — but  our  guide  here  at  Ches- 
ter could  scarcely  be  described  as  being  more  than 
a  garnet.  However,  we  tramped  about  and  in  and 
out  with  him,  through  aisles  and  cloisters,  and  looked 
at  a  curious  gallery  under  the  clerestory  that  fronted 
into  the  cathedral  nave  through  a  low  series  of  quatre- 
foils,  "  where  monks  used  to  stand  during  the  serv- 
ice," as  we  were  told  was  the  tradition  of  its  use. 

But  the  most  interesting  things,  to  us,  in  shadowy 
Chester  Cathedral,  for  we  knew  we  were  to  see  other 
cathedrals  still  more  rich  in  beauty,  were  two  tattered 
and  time-faded  battle-flags  that  went  up  Bunker 
Hill  against  the  deadly  American  fire,  and  they 
thrilled  us  as  mementos  of  that  great  day  on  which 
the  honors  were  with  the  losers.  And  after  the  garnet 
had  left  us  we  saw  another  American  memorial,  a 
tablet,  called  to  our  attention  by  a  Welsh  visitor  who 
saw  we  were  Americans,  and  it  commemorates,  in  sim- 
ple and  dignified  words,  the  domestic  and  religious 
virtues  of  Frederick  Philipse,  and  his  devotion  to  his 
country  and  his  king  in  opposing,  at  the  peril  of  his 
life,  "  the  late  rebellion  in  North  America,"  in  conse- 
quence of  which  his  estates  were  confiscated  and  he 
himself  was  compelled  to  flee;  and  the  picture  came 
to  us  of  the  Philipse  manor  house  at  Yonkers,  over- 
looking the  Hudson,  and  of  the  beautiful  sister 
of  this  loyalist,  whom  Washington,  years  before  the 
Revolution,  would  have  married  had  she  not  chosen 


INTO  WALES 19 

instead  an  officer  who  afterwards  fought  against 
Washington  in  the  war.  How  one  country  interlocks 
with  another! — and  all  this  from  a  forgotten  tablet 
on  a  pillar  in  this  ancient  English  cathedral. 

We  saw  delightful  old  houses  as  we  motored 
through  Chester,  half-timbered  as  the  charming 
ancient  style  is  termed,  with  projecting  stories,  and 
rich  in  carving  and  ornamentation,  and  such  houses 
give  a  fine  impression  of  the  quaint  and  curious  skill 
of  old-time  workers;  and  most  interesting  of  all  are 
the  ancient  Rows,  houses  with  footways  running  on 
top  of  the  first  story  and  taking  the  place  of  what 
would  be  the  front  room  of  the  second  floor,  making 
thus  a  second-story  public  passageway,  pillared  in 
front  and  with  the  third  floor  roofing  it  over,  and 
with  this  passageway  giving  access  to  the  most  at- 
tractive and  gay  little  shops  in  town,  facing  upon 
them. 

We  did  not  motor  up  and  down  Chester,  but  merely 
in  at  one  side  and  out  at  the  other,  for  it  is  impossible 
to  do  pleasant  sightseeing  while  guiding  a  car  through 
streets  as  crowded  as  these ;  and  so  while  we  did  most 
of  our  looking  around  we  left  the  car  in  a  garage. 
The  problem  of  what  to  do  with  the  car  while  ex- 
ploring the  interiors  of  cathedrals  and  prow^ling 
through  quaint  passageways  and  walking  on  city 
walls  is  ever  before  the  motorist  on  tour,  for  all  his 
bags  and  rugs  and  coats,  to  say  nothing  of  lamps  and 
other  detachables,  not  to  speak  of  the  very  car  itself, 
cannot  be  casually  left  on  city  streets;  and  at  this 
garage  we  had  a  queerer  experience  than  came  any- 
where else  on  the  journey,  for,  returning  for  the  car 
sooner  than  expected,  it  was  found  removed  to  a 
remote  corner,  with  our  bags  and  coats  laid  in  a  heap 
in  the  bottom  of  it,  "  so  as  not  to  attract  attention," 
we  were  told.  It  made  us  a  little  uneasy  at  the  mo- 
ment, but  everything  seemed  to  be  there — raincoats. 


20 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

tools,  rugs  and  trunk  on  the  back.  And  we  were 
many  miles  on  the  route,  with  darkness  coming  on, 
before  we  found  that  the  lock  on  the  outer  case  of  the 
trunk  had  been  torn  off  by  a  chisel  and  that  we  must 
have  returned  at  just  the  vital  moment,  for  the  bags 
inside  had  not  been  opened.  This  was  an  uncanny 
beginning — but  the  only  incident  of  the  kind  on  the 
entire  trip. 

But  motorists  are  eager  to  get  away  from  any  city ; 
it  is  not  alone  the  call  of  the  road,  in  the  sense 
that  it  is  the  call  for  the  exhilaration  of  movement,  but 
it  is  a  restless  yearning  that  represents  the  restless 
longing  of  mankind  for  fields  and  sky  and  air  and 
liberty.  And  so  we  stayed  in  Chester  only  long 
enough  to  see  it  briefly,  and  then  with  eager  happi- 
ness and  larger  anticipation  turned  our  faces  west- 
ward. For  us  it  was  Westward  Ho!  over  splendid 
highways  to  nearby  Wales. 

And  as  we  left  the  city  we  turned  first  down  an 
attractive  road  to  visit  Eaton  Hall,  the  seat  of  one 
of  the  wealthiest  of  English  peers,  the  Duke  of  West- 
minster. It  was  a  trifle  annoying  to  find  that  motors 
were  not  allowed  beyond  the  lodge  gates,  for,  although 
it  was  cool  when  motoring,  we  found  that  the  day  had 
turned  quite  warm  when  we  began  to  walk,  and  it 
was  a  walk  of  a  mile  and  a  half;  but  it  was  a  fine 
walk  through  a  superb  park.  In  the  notice  at  the 
entrance  gate  the  building  itself,  the  residence  of  the 
duke,  is  modestly  referred  to  as  the  "  house,"  but  it 
is  in  reality  a  huge  and  homely  pile  of  so-called 
Gothic.  One  sees  that  there  has  been  effort  to  copy 
the  towered  and  terraced  effect  of  Westminster  in 
London,  as  if  remindful  that  it  is  from  vast  real- 
estate  holdings  in  that  city  that  this  peer  obtains  the 
greatest  part  of  his  wealth.  But  his  estate  here  is 
itself  a  thing  of  vastness;  so  many  square  miles,  so 
many  miles  long — the  duke  even  has  coal  mines  of 


INTO  WALES 21 

his  own,  with  a  private  railway  line  inside  of  the  es- 
tate boundaries  for  carrying  the  coal.  We  were  to 
see  other  great  estates  in  the  course  of  our  journey, 
but  none  more  strongly  illustrative  of  the  striking 
features  of  land  tenure.  Yet  the  duke  does  not 
attempt  to  hold  stubbornly  to  all  the  square  miles  of 
his  tract;  no,  he  is  reasonable;  he  does  not  wish  to 
sell,  indeed,  but  there  are  some  outlying  comers  of 
the  estate  that  he  is  willing  to  part  with — on  leases, 
so  a  signboard  has  it,  of  nine  hundred  and  ninety-nine 
years. 

And  we  are  once  more  on  the  highroad  and  feel 
that  we  have  been  going  great  distances  because,  be- 
ginning in  England,  we  have  already  reached  Wales ; 
whereas  we  have  not  really  crossed  the  line,  for, 
though  Chester  was  once  a  part  of  Wales  and  is  often 
looked  upon  as  Welsh,  it  is  really  in  cat-famous 
Cheshire  and  thus  in  England;  and  as  to  distance — 
well,  a  glimpse  at  the  record  shows  that  we  have  been 
going  but  slowly.  Not  that  we  were  in  a  hurry,  but 
that  we  have  gone  a  much  shorter  distance  than  we 
had  expected,  for  the  car,  being  new,  had  been  run- 
ning stiffly  and  with  now  and  then  a  little  difficulty. 
But  we  were  glad  to  have  a  new  car  rather  than  a 
thoroughly  broken-in  one,  feeling  safer  as  to  engine 
and  brakes  and  tires,  and  confident  that  with  a  little 
patience  the  smoothness  of  running  would  come. 

On  toward  Hawarden!  And  the  wheels  seem 
musically  to  hum,  and  the  wind  comes  fresh  and  clear, 
and  a  line  of  distant  mountains  looms,  vaguely  dis- 
tant, in  a  long  gray  line  in  the  softly-graying  after- 
noon. And  we  pass  over  a  railroad  grade  crossing! 
and  then  another! — and  thus  are  legends  shattered, 
for  we  thought  there  were  none  in  this  land,  for  on 
no  point  is  the  average  Englishman  more  insistent 
than  in  claiming  that  there  are  no  railway  grade 
crossings  in  Great  Britain; — and,  with  the  realization 


22 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

that  this  boast  is  based  on  error,  we  find  ourselves 
passing  over  the  boundary  into  Wales. 

And  so  the  car  is  nursed  carefully  up  the  long  hill 
that  is  topped  by  Hawarden  village.  And  here  is  the 
shop  to  which  Gladstone,  the  Great  Commoner,  used 
solemnly  to  carry  his  own  shoes  for  their  cobbling — 
for  odd  things  must  the  politician  do  if  by  politics 
he  would  thrive,  whether  in  England  or  in  America, 
and  it  was  by  such  devices  as  this  that  Gladstone 
strove  to  take  the  people's  minds  from  the  fact  that 
he  was  in  reality  living  in  a  fine,  great,  exclusive, 
walled-in  park,  just  as  if  he  were  not  the  Great  Com- 
moner, but  one  of  the  titled  Uncommoners;  indeed, 
the  park  which  he  owned — or  was  it  his  wife? — has 
within  it  not  only  an  ancient  castle  ruin,  but  the  great 
imposing  modern  mansion  in  which  he  lived.  Twice 
favored,  he! 

And,  as  at  some  other  great  estates,  the  rule  is 
against  the  entry  of  motor  cars;  reasonably  enough, 
perhaps,  but  you  begin  to  think  that  motoring  in 
England  is  going  to  include  much  walking;  and,  al- 
though in  theory  we  ought  to  enjoy  a  walk  in  such 
a  park,  and  although  we  ordinarily  should  do  so,  we 
are  all  amused  to  find  ourselves,  like  other  motorists, 
positively  aggrieved  at  what  all  at  once  seems  a  hard- 
ship. But  you  come  to  find  that  there  is  not  to  be 
much  walking,  after  all. 

The  park  itself,  with  its  great  trees,  is  mostly  rather 
rough  and  unkempt,  and  except  for  its  finished  roads 
it  would  seem  much  like  a  bit  of  attractive  country 
pasture  and  woodland,  but  there  is  a  wonderful  gar- 
den, geometrically  planned  and  edged  delightfully 
with  box,  near  the  house,  and  separated  from  the  park 
by  a  ha-ha,  the  diverting  but  serious  name  for  a 
sunken  walled  ditch.  And  from  great  part  of  the 
long  walk  through  the  park  there  is  a  fine,  broad 
sweep  of  landscape. 


INTO  WALES 23 

Thus  far  we  had  marveled  at  the  small  amount  of 
plowed  land  seen  along  the  roadsides,  and  this  place 
is  but  another  of  those  that  show  how  much  more 
charming  a  park  may  look  than  a  plowed  field  and  of 
how  much  less  practical  use  it  is  to  the  countryside. 
And  yet,  it  may  be  added,  this  particular  park  is  so 
hidden  from  the  public  road  behind  a  high,  bleak  stone 
wall  that  perhaps  a  stretch  of  arable  land  would  look 
better,  after  all. 

A  tiny  cluttered  village  is  Hawarden,  and  at  its 
very  edge  was  a  gypsy  camp,  with  village  boys  vainly 
trying  to  ride  gypsy  donkeys  bareback — a  diversion 
as  old  as  Time!  The  villagers  that  one  meets  are 
of  a  fine  and  simple  type  and  the  influence  of  Glad- 
stone and  his  shoes  was  probably  excellent,  one 
thinks!  The  car  is  in  some  straits  again  after  its 
climb  and  everyone  is  unobtrusively  willing  to  be 
helpful.  A  man  lends  his  bicycle  so  that  one  of  us 
may  go  in  search  of  an  expert  mechanic,  and  the 
mechanic  comes  back  in  his  motor  repair  car,  carry- 
ing bicycle  and  rider  with  him,  and  arrives  in  the 
center  of  the  village  in  a  flurry  of  local  excitement. 
A  necessary  adjustment  is  made  and  we  are  off  on 
the  road,  down  a  long  hill,  in  the  cool  of  approach- 
ing evening,  and  out  upon  broad  levels,  and  then 
we  unexpectedly  run  into  a  series  of  manufacturing 
towns  just  where  we  are  expecting  open  country — 
towns  dreary  in  themselves,  but  with  the  faces  of  the 
people  bright  and  not  too  tired.  Men  and  women 
and  children  are  thronging  about,  for  work  has  ceased 
and  they  are  out  for  an  hour  or  so  in  the  long  and 
lingering  light. 

We  drive  cautiously,  for  one  must  from  the  first 
realize  that  the  people  of  Britain  love  to  walk  in  the 
middle  of  the  road;  is  it  a  survival  of  the  time  when 
there  was  safety  only  in  the  middle?  And  we  go 
slowly  also,  because  the  placards  are  frequent  that  hold 


24 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

the  motorist  to  the  almost  unattainable  minimum  of 
five  miles  an  hour,  and  we  do  not  know  how  par- 
ticular or  how  disagreeable  a  policeman  or  a  magis- 
trate might  be.  There  were  plenty  of  policemen  in 
sight,  keeping  a  sharp  eye  on  the  factory  throngs  and 
giving  an  impression  that  trouble  is  repressed  in  its 
inception;  and  the  officers  look  at  us  with  an  air  of 
knowing  that  we  are  strangers  and  express  by  cour- 
teous waves  of  the  arm  that  they  are  ready  to  be  of 
help. 

We  come  up  slowly  behind  a  band;  it  is  mill  men 
earnestly  blowing  and  thumping  as  they  march 
proudly  on,  but  attracting  little  attention,  except 
from  a  following — no  small  exception! — of  the  en- 
tire small  population  of  the  neighborhood,  with  not 
a  head  of  this  following  above  the  waistbands  of  the 
band! — giving  a  queer  effect,  as  we  look  ahead  and 
down  a  little  slope,  as  of  tall  men  and  a  thousand 
twinkling  legs !  And  all,  bandsmen  and  children,  tall 
men  and  legs,  alike  made  courteous  way  for  us  and 
the  players  smiled  with  conscious  pride  as  we  thanked 
them  and  gave  an  impression  as  of  praising  their 
efforts. 

The  line  of  dreary  towns  was  left  behind  us — 
dreary,  but  with  an  impression  of  cheerful  folk  and 
a  great  deal  of  music,  for  there  were  two  or  three 
other  bands,  also  passed,  not  to  speak  of  a  few  hand 
organs! — and  at  one  side  of  our  road,  as  we  went 
on  in  the  now  swift-gathering  dusk,  were  great  sweeps 
of  yellowish  brown,  the  sands  of  the  estuary  of  the 
Dee.  And  how  vividly  and  almost  with  a  start  came 
the  memory  of  "  Oh,  Mary,  call  the  cattle  home, 
across  the  sands  of  Dee ! "  The  tide  was  out,  leav- 
ing the  immense  stretches  bare,  and  right  to  the  edge 
of  the  great  sands,  across  the  water  from  these  dreary 
towns,  came  down  green  fields  and  garden  walls  and 
cottages. 


Hawardex,  the  home  of  Gladstone 


Unexpected  music  ox  a  Welsh  mountain  road 


INTO  WALES 25 

The  sun  set  in  a  great  round  ball,  and  twilight  came 
in  earnest,  and  there  was  another  long  and  crowded 
street  and  then,  with  unexpectedness,  a  delightful 
change  to  romance  and  solitary  beauty,  with  hills 
and  ravines  and  broken  country  and  widening  views 
that  were  very  soft  and  lovely  in  that  half  light,  and 
we  came  to  a  wonderful  road,  twisting  up  and  ever 
up,  with  rocky  banks  rising  above  and  rocky  banks 
dropping  far  below,  a  road  of  sweet  wildness,  and  as 
we  reached  the  top,  approaching  Holywell,  there  was 
really  a  roadside  well,  with  a  group  of  pretty  Welsh 
girls  gathered  about,  each  with  one  or  two  buckets 
for  the  evening  supply  of  water;  we  came  upon  them 
unexpectedly,  around  a  bend,  and  they  were  softly 
singing  together  an  old-time  part-song.  It  was  all 
wonderfully  effective  there  in  the  falling  twilight,  and 
the  sound  of  their  voices  was  very  sweet  and  low. 
And  we  halted  for  a  while,  for  the  radiator  had  begim 
to  boil  and  we  needed  water  for  it  and  a  little  time 
for  the  cooling  of  it,  and  our  stop  was  lengthened 
perforce  by  a  little  more  trouble  in  starting  the  car 
again — almost  the  last  such  trouble,  this — and  at  our 
request,  and  with  pretty  shyness,  the  girls  sang  on, 
rendering  old  Welsh  songs  with  a  simple  natural- 
ness. 

And  close  beside  one  of  the  older  of  the  group 
stood  a  child,  to  whom  its  sister  said,  "  Come, 
Jenny." 

"No!" 

"  Come,  Jenny! "  with  a  soft  urgency. 

"  No! "  with  a  firm  and  not  disagreeable  determi- 
nation ;  not  obstinacy,  the  differentiation  lying  in  the 
fact  that  the  child  was  attractive  looking  and  that 
its  voice  was  pleasantly  full  of  a  sort  of  curiosity. 

"  She's  two  years  and  nine  months  old,"  said  the 
sister,  as  if  in  patient  explanation;  and,  "  Come, 
Jenny,"  again  she  softly  urged. 


26 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

"  No."  And  then,  from  the  lips  of  this  child  of  less 
than  three  years,  and  in  clear  tones,  came  the  sen- 
tence, amazing  for  such  an  age:  "  I  will  wait;  I  want 
to  see  the  motor  go!  " 

"  And  she'll  wait!  "  said  the  sister  resignedly. 

And  she  did. 

'But  it  was  not  long.  At  the  next  cranking  the 
engine  rallied,  and  we  were  on  the  way  again,  and 
left  behind  us,  on  that  wonderful  road  in  the  dim- 
ming light,  the  group  of  softly-singing  girls. 

It  was  eight  o'clock  when  we  got  to  the  town  of 
Holywell ;  we  had  loitered  in  Cranf ord  and  walked  in 
long-avenued  parks,  and  the  motor  had  delayed  us, 
but,  although  we  had  had  some  rather  vague  idea  of 
getting  to  Conway  that  night,  it  did  not  bother  us 
that  we  had  gone  only  forty-nine  miles,  for  every- 
thing had  been  so  delightful.  And  from  the  begin- 
ning, although  we  knew  that  there  was  an  expected 
total  distance  to  cover  within  a  definite  time,  we  were 
not  going  to  worry  and  hurry  ourselves  away  from 
pleasant  places.  To  see  Great  Britain  thoroughly 
was  our  object,  but  it  was  even  more  our  object  to 
see  it  with  perfect  enjoyment.  And,  as  it  turned  out, 
we  saw  it  with  both  the  thoroughness  and  the 
enjoyment. 

Our  motor  guide-books  and  road-books  said  noth- 
ing whatever  of  any  hotel  at  Holywell,  though 
Baedeker  named  two,  but  we  soon  espied  these  two, 
both  good-looking,  and  chose  one  of  them  and  drove 
up  to  the  door  quite  ready  for  dinner  and  rooms. 

Our  arrival  put  the  place  in  a  turmoil.  It  seemed 
as  if  the  whole  town  was  in  a  flutter,  as  if  all  the 
neighbors  had  to  be  gathered  in  for  consultation  or 
assistance.  We  could  not  in  the  least  understand  it, 
and  in  fact  we  do  not  understand  it  even  yet,  except 
that,  in  course  of  time,  we  gradually  came  to  learn 
how  unexpected  visitors  may  be  at  many  of  the  inns 


INTO  WALES 27 

of  Great  Britain.  The  taproom  is  sure  to  be  open 
and  busy,  but  as  to  visitors  for  meals  and  overnight, 
even  in  many  a  large  hotel,  there  is  quite  often  no 
anticipation,  quite  often  no  supply  of  food! 

But  at  any  rate  everyone  here  was  in  a  pleasant 
flutter;  the  nominal  head  of  the  house,  the  man  (who 
is  never  the  actual  head  of  a  British  inn),  as  well  as 
his  wife  and  his  daughter  and  the  man-servant  and 
the  maid-servants  and  the  town. 

After  many  whisperings  we  were  shown  our  rooms ; 
there  were  six  well-ordered  rooms  to  choose  from, 
and  we  found  them  pleasant  and  clean,  with  much  of 
old-time  furniture  and  a  vast  array  of  white  crocheted 
mats  upon  the  toilet  stands,  and  we  were  given  hot 
water  after  more  fluttering  and  told  that  a  late  sup- 
per would  soon  be  made  ready  for  us. 

"And  what  should  you  like?"  was  the  solicitous 
inquiry. 

Full  of  thoughts  of  our  inn  of  the  night  previous, 
we  suggested  chops,  and  there  was  instant  acquies- 
cence, but  with  the  acquiescence  we  noticed  an  in- 
creased flutter,  and  then  followed  much  scurrying 
down  corridors  and  shutting  of  doors  in  the  distance, 
but  we  did  not  understand  what  it  portended  until, 
three-quarters  of  an  hour  later,  we  were  told  that 
not  a  chop  was  to  be  found  in  all  Holywell! 

"  So  won't  you  choose  something  else?" 

We  were  really  hungry.  It  was  now  half-past  nine. 
And  we  felt  that  it  would  be  the  part  of  policy  to  let 
the  choice  rest  with  them. 

"Then  bacon  and  eggs?"  They  and  many  an- 
other keeper  of  inns  can  utter  these  words  and  put 
such  a  beam  of  delight  into  their  eyes  as  they  say 
the  formula,  so  we  came  to  learn,  that  ideas  of  chicken 
or  cold  roast  beef  or  the  porterhouse  steaks  of  home 
have  to  fall  before  its  necessity.  We  were  hungry. 
This  was  not  precisely  what  we  should  have  chosen, 


28 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

but  we  promptly  agreed,  whereupon  there  was  more 
flutter,  more  running  here  and  there,  more  opening 
and  shutting  of  doors  and  bobbing  about,  and  mean- 
while we  alternated  between  our  rooms  and  the  series 
of  pleasant  sitting-rooms  and  little  lairs  and  dens 
provided  for  the  accommodation  of  the  visiting  public, 
of  which  rooms  there  is  always  a  disproportionately 
large  number  at  an  English  inn.  It  was  well  after 
ten  o'clock  when  the  bacon  and  eggs,  with  great  piled 
plates  of  buttered  but  delicious  bread,  with  hot  tea, 
was  served;  we  had  suggested  coffee,  but  had  at  once 
seen  that  cojff  ee  was  quite  beyond  them. 

On  the  whole,  we  spent  a  pleasant  night;  assur- 
edly there  could  not  have  been  more  earnest  desire 
to  please.  And  when  they  asked,  in  all  soberness,  as 
we  went  to  bed,  what  we  should  like  for  breakfast,  we 
fully  realized  that  it  was  a  matter  not  of  choice,  but 
of  what  there  might  be.  "  Then  bacon  and  eggs? " 
— this  with  an  alert  brightness  as  of  discovery,  as  if 
bacon  and  eggs  had  never  before  been  thought  of  for 
a  visitor's  delectation.  We  agreed ;  there  was  nothing 
else  to  do ;  but  we  bespoke  a  pot  of  coffee  with  earnest 
firmness. 

And  all  this  was  the  more  surprising,  because  Holy- 
well is  an  ancient  town  and  has  long  been  a  place  of 
considerable  manufacturing,  although  we  happened 
upon  an  approach  by  so  attractive  and  lonely  a  road ; 
so  old  a  town  that  people  have  been  going  there  since 
before  the  time  of  William  the  Conqueror,  he  him- 
self having  been  one  of  the  many  who  have  stayed  in 
the  place — ^not  in  the  inn  where  we  were,  however! 
For  not  only  is  Holywell  a  manufacturing  center, 
but  its  holy  well  has  for  centuries  drawn  pilgrims 
thither — even  James  the  Second  pilgrimaged  here  to 
ask  for  the  heir  that  afterwards  came,  although,  so  his 
enemies  claimed  (and  surely  as  an  odd  reward  of 
prayer),  in  a  warming-pan! 


INTO  WALES 29 

At  first  we  naturally  supposed  that  where  the  girls 
were  gathered  singing  was  the  famous  well,  but  the 
holy  well  is  really  a  spring,  of  enormous  flow,  quite 
on  the  other  side  of  the  town,  and  is  surmounted  by 
an  ancient  and  really  fine  bit  of  stonework.  But  it 
does  not,  in  our  memories,  in  spite  of  William  the 
Conqueror  and  James  the  Second,  match  the  well 
where  we  halted  the  car  and  listened  to  the  Welsh 
girls'  songs. 


CHAPTER  IV 

WENDING  A   WELSH   WAY 

FROM  the  very  first  day  the  motorist  begins  to 
realize,  and  with  every  day  the  more  deeply 
realizes,  the  delightful  difference  between 
starting  at  what  moment  he  chooses  and  by  what 
route  he  chooses  and  over  the  splendid  open  roads, 
rather  than  to  be  tied  to  railway  time-tables  and  to 
views  from  the  car  windows.  At  Holywell,  all  that 
we  were  to  do  was  to  start  when  we  were  ready,  across 
country,  with  our  next  objective  tiny  St.  Asaph  and 
its  tiny  cathedral. 

We  went  out  of  ancient  Holywell,  up  and  up  a  very 
long  hill,  by  a  white  road  of  limestone  whiteness — 
odd,  how  many  towns  you  leave  by  a  long  hill ! — and 
the  car  climbed  valiantly,  and  again  the  radiator 
boiled;  but  it  is  not  wise,  if  one  has  regard  for  his 
radiator,  to  fill  it  with  hard  limestone  water,  and  so 
an  effort  was  made  to  obtain  rainwater,  but  it  was  a 
difficult  effort  and  it  taught  us  always  to  carry  a 
couple  of  quart  bottles  of  good  water  in  the  car. 

We  have  waited  till  fairly  on  our  way  to  say  that 
there  was  no  difficulty  about  observing  the  different 
rule  of  the  road  in  England,  the  passing  other  vehi- 
cles on  the  left  instead  of  the  right;  we  had  supposed 
that  it  would  be  a  hard  matter  for  at  least  some  days 
and  that  it  would  require  very  great  caution,  and  it 
did  require  caution  and  concentration,  but  as  any 
motorist  at  all  times  must  give  caution  and  concentra- 
tion to  his  work  if  he  would  be  safe,  there  was  little 
extra  difficulty  involved.    For  one  thing,  the  driver 

30 


WENDING  A  WELSH  WAY 31 

is  always  helped  by  the  fact  that  the  motor  that  is 
coming  toward  him  is  turning  properly,  so  that,  with 
a  little  of  extra  caution,  the  entire  matter  is  simple, 
and  soon  the  turning  to  the  left  becomes  almost  auto- 
matic. It  is  rather  odd,  though,  that  it  seems  harder 
to  remember  to  pass  a  vehicle  properly  that  is  going 
in  the  same  direction  than  properly  to  pass  one  going 
in  the  opposite  direction;  to  pass  it  on  the  right,  that 
is,  instead  of  the  American  left;  and  perhaps  the  ex- 
planation is  that  here  there  is  no  suggestion  from  the 
action  of  the  other  motor.  But  even  this  is  too  light 
a  matter  to  make  any  trouble,  and  what  threatened 
to  be  a  serious  inconvenience  and  possible  danger  van- 
ished into  almost  nothing. 

It  was  under  a  warm  sun  that  we  started  on  our 
way  after  our  first  night  in  Wales,  and  before  long 
we  reached  a  point  from  which  there  was  a  great  view 
of  the  distant  sea — a  distant  shimmering,  noble  and 
unexpected — and  then  we  were  off  among  the  hills 
again,  on  a  lofty  road  that  was  mainly  level,  and  great 
mountains  rose  on  the  left,  in  the  near  distance,  and 
between  the  road  and  the  mountains  were  broad, 
smooth  fields,  furze-covered  in  a  glory  of  bright  yel- 
low, and  at  our  right  were  groves  of  fir  and  larch. 
For  miles  in  front  of  us  the  road  went  stretching  on,  a 
line  of  marvelous  white. 

At  the  summit  of  a  long  hill  there  came  another 
halt  for  engine  cooling;  and  where  could  a  more 
charming  spot  be  chosen!  For  a  while  the  car  was 
determined  not  to  start,  no  matter  what  was  done 
in  adjusting  and  turning;  it  seemed  almost  human 
in  its  perverseness ;  we  were  miles  from  any  possible 
aid,  and  then,  in  that  lonely  region,  along  came  two 
Italians,  wheeling  their  street-piano  from  one  town  to 
another,  and  at  a  word  they  stopped  for  us  and  began 
to  play  their  tunes,  and  there  on  that  level  road  be- 
tween great  trees  and  the  fields  of  furze  we  danced 


32 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

and  we  laughed,  and  we  forgot  as  we  danced  and  we 
laughed  that  a  motor  car  could  be  troublesome !  The 
Italians,  in  this  strange  land,  were  ecstatic  at  hearing 
a  word  or  two  of  their  own  tongue  and  we  said 
"  Grazia  "  and  "  Buon  giorno!  "  to  them  and  they  to 
us,  all  strangers  far  from  home.  After  this  gay,  little 
rest  on  the  highroad,  we  essayed  to  start  the  car  again, 
and  in  an  instant  all  its  ill-temper  had  vanished  and 
it  started — and  never  again  on  the  entire  journey  did 
it  trouble  us,  but  went  steadily  better  and  better  and 
more  and  more  smoothly  day  by  day  until  the  finish 
at  Liverpool.  It  would  probably  not  be  best  to  rec- 
ommend dancing  to  enthusiastic  Italian  music  on  a 
lonely  road  as  a  remedy  for  a  car  that  will  not  go, 
but  it  certainly  worked  well  with  us,  and  with  light 
hearts  we  went  on  into  the  unknown.  For  it  was  all 
the  unknown!  There  was  never  a  moment  when  w^e 
did  not  feel  that  we  were  coming  upon  the  unex- 
pected. We  were  always  having  some  new  experience 
or  finding  some  unexpected  view. 

The  clouds  and  shadows  chased  each  other  across 
the  wind-swept  yellow  fields,  and  lights  and  shadows 
flickered  beneath  the  trees  as  the  sunlight  sifted 
through  the  swaying  branches.  And  a  great  valley 
opened  up,  and  down  and  down  a  long  road  we  went, 
coasting  for  two  miles — and  in  such  glorious  air  there 
is  a  peculiar  exhilaration  in  coasting,  even  more 
than  in  straight  going  under  power — and  then  we 
were  on  a  level  stretch,  and  at  length  a  tower,  low  and 
square  and  of  stone,  the  tower  of  ancient  St.  Asaph's, 
smallest  of  all  the  cathedrals  of  Great  Britain,  came 
in  the  distance  into  view. 

In  the  midst  of  a  little  town,  tiny  and  quiet,  stands 
the  tiny  cathedral  itself,  in  its  quintessence  of  quiet. 
An  American  once  remarked,  after  having  been  led 
to  one  after  another  of  the  mammoth  cathedrals  of 
Great  Britain,  and  searching  for  the  right  descriptive 


Tin:     31A1X    STKEKT    OF    CoXWAY 


The  strikixg  towers  of  Conway  Castle 


A    RIVER    MOUTH    IX    NORTHERN    WaLES 


Cricket  in  the  cathedral  town  or  Bangor 


WENDING  A  WELSH  WAY 33 

word,  that  they  were  capacious!  But  this  cathedral 
of  St.  Asaph's  is  far  from  capacious!  In  fact,  the 
Lilliputian  building  is  but  182  feet  in  length,  as  com- 
pared with  the  584  feet  of  the  new  Liverpool  cathe- 
dral or  the  560  of  ancient  Winchester. 

St.  Asaph's  is  noteworthy  not  only  for  this  mat- 
ter of  size,  or  rather  lack  of  size,  but  in  that  it  was 
used  to  keep  cattle  and  pigs  in,  in  the  time  of  Crom- 
well, just  as  we  were  to  learn  later  that  Gloucester 
Cathedral  was  used  for  horses;  it  was  clearly  the  de- 
liberate intent  of  the  highly  religious  men  of  the  Com- 
monwealth to  degrade  cathedrals.  And  this  cathe- 
dral seemed  also  noteworthy  to  us  because  among  its 
monuments  is  one  to  the  memory  of  Mrs.  Hemans,  an 
almost  forgotten  name,  but  one  that  ought  to  be  re- 
membered, for  a  woman  who  could  put  into  English 
literature  three  poems  that  are  familiar  to  every  per- 
son of  even  moderate  education  and  knowledge  has 
performed  an  achievement:  the  three  being,  "The 
Stately  Homes  of  England,"  which  splendidly  ex- 
presses the  English  country  landscape,  "  Casabi- 
anca,"  which  is  spirited  and  full  of  feeling,  and  "  The 
Breaking  Waves  Dashed  High,"  which  every  Amer- 
ican honors  and  loves,  because  she  felt  what  she  wrote 
and  was  herself  thrilled  by  it  and  her  lines  splendidly 
express  the  brave  spirit  of  the  Pilgrims,  even  though 
the  coast  is  not  stern  or  rockbound ;  and  if  it  be  added 
that,  in  spite  of  putting  up  a  monument  here  in  the 
cathedral  to  her  memory,  she  is  really  buried  in  Dub- 
lin, it  is  only  to  suggest  that  there  may  be  Welsh  bulls 
as  well  as  Irish. 

St.  Asaph's — which  is  pronounced  San  Tassaph's, 
just  as  up  in  Scotland  they  pronounce  St.  Andrew's 
San  Tandrews — ^is  really  an  interesting  specimen 
among  the  thirty-four  varieties.  Length  of  building, 
it  may  be  remarked,  has  no  bearing  upon  size  of 
income,  for  the  bishopric  of  182  feet  receives  pre- 


34 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

cisely  the  same  as  does  the  bishopric  of  584  feet, 
twenty-one  thousand  dollars!  And  of  the  two  forces 
upon  which  England  chiefly  rehes  for  safety — ^her 
fleet  and  her  church — she  pays  more  to  the  bishops 
than  to  the  admirals. 

But  no  consideration  of  the  Established  Church 
and  its  expensiveness  to  the  people  disturbed  us  as 
Americans  or  in  any  degree  lessened  our  apprecia- 
tion of  the  supreme  peacefulness  of  this  little  cathe- 
dral and  its  immediate  surroundings.  The  little  town 
was  drowsing  through  its  mid-day  warmth;  a  few 
children  went  quietly  home  from  school,  a  few  cattle 
wandered  thoughtfully  down  the  street,  the  tinkle, 
tinkle  of  a  distant  blacksmith's  hammer  came  very 
softly  and  was  scarcely  louder  than  the  wind  in  the 
great  beech-trees  that  shaded  the  cathedral  and  the 
daisied  turf  and  the  massed  laburnum  that  drooped 
yellow  over  the  old  stone  walls. 

But  even  a  quiet  little  cathedral  and  a  little  town 
must  not  too  long  detain  us,  and  we  are  on  our  way 
again,  following  devious  turns,  and,  as  we  paused  for 
a  few  moments  to  let  a  flock  of  sheep  maneuver 
through  the  tight-walled  road  to  safety,  a  man  came 
hurrying  toward  us.  "  You  are  from  my  own  coun- 
try!" he  cried  joyfully. 

He  did  not  look  like  an  American,  as  he  stood  by 
us  in  his  knee-long  walking  trousers.  However,  we 
supposed  he  must  be,  since  he  said  so.  But  in  a  mo- 
ment, "  You  are  from  Devon!  "  he  exclaimed. 

In  a  sense  we  were  from  Devon,  for  our  car,  sup- 
plied to  us  in  Manchester,  had  been  bought  through 
a  Devon  agent,  who  had  secured  the  license  and  plates 
for  us,  and  the  plates  showed  a  "  T  "  before  the  car 
number,  each  county  having  its  own  arbitrary  initial 
to  designate  the  cars  licensed  by  it. 

The  man  was  disappointed  to  find  we  were  not  from 
Devon.     "  I  have  been  looking  at  every  motor  car 


WENDING  A  WELSH  WAY 35 

since  I  came  to  Wales,"  he  said.  He  was  far  from 
home,  he  went  on,  up  here,  and  then  he  smiled,  it 
coming  to  him  that  the  distance  could  not  very  well 
seem  great  to  us.  But  the  greater  part  of  English 
folk  travel  but  little;  the  sons  of  the  well-to-do  still 
like  to  take  a  European  journey,  the  equivalent  of 
the  "  grand  tour  "  of  the  past,  and  the  rest  of  the  na- 
tion go  about  sparingly,  except  on  short  bank-holiday 
trips  and,  every  summer,  to  the  particular  resort  to 
which  all  their  lives  they  have  been  accustomed  to 
go. — And  yet,  after  all,  some  Englishmen  learn  to 
travel,  for  Henry  M.  Stanley  was  born  less  than  ten 
miles  from  that  very  spot!  The  English  travel  pro- 
saically or  else  go  very  far  afield,  indeed. 

The  Devon  man,  finding  us  strangers,  though  not 
Devonians,  at  once  exerted  himself  to  be  of  assist- 
ance and  he  pointed  out,  across  a  sweep  of  fields,  a 
ruin  standing  grimly  beneath  the  shadow  of  a  distant 
mountain.  "  That  is  Rhuddlan,"  he  said,  and  in  its 
distant  vague  and  shadowy  dignity  it  seemed  to  be 
telling  vaguely  of  the  stories  that  have  linked  it  with 
the  names  of  the  sovereigns  of  eight  centuries  and 
with  many  a  siege  and  battle.  And  again  we  realized 
the  privileges  of  motoring,  in  coming  upon  the  fas- 
cinating and  the  seldom-visited  away  from  the  line 
of  railroad  travel. 

We  were  aiming,  by  a  diagonal  cross-country  road, 
for  Abergele  and  the  coast  and  we  passed  a  very  fine, 
modern  gateway  built  quite  successfully  in  the  style 
of  the  old,  the  gate  to  the  park  of  the  castle  of  Dun- 
donald.  And  we  motored  by  a  high  hill  road  to  where 
we  suddenly  had  a  great  view  of  the  sea  stretching 
off  superbly  in  a  lovely  blue  under  the  bright  sun 
and  the  brightest  of  bright  blue  skies.  It  was  Colwyn 
Bay,  and  it  curved  sweepingly  to  the  right,  to  where, 
far  off,  it  was  edged  with  white  lines  of  sand  with 
mountain  heights  rising  beyond,  while  at  the  left  there 


36 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

was  a  mighty  headland,  Great  Orme's  Head,  rising 
high  and  jutting  far,  and  from  our  lofty  road  there 
was  a  steep  dropping  down  into  the  sea,  and  behind 
us  was  a  hedge  of  hawthorn  and  ivy  with  hills  rising 
steeply,  and  in  the  hedges  the  cuckoos  were  flitting 
about. 

We  went  on  by  that  wonderful  road  with  its  great 
views  from  our  height  and — how  often  we  were  to 
notice  such  differences! — with  the  railroad  far  below 
us,  where  little  could  be  seen.  There  were  rocks  and 
mountains,  headland  after  headland,  the  ever  blue 
sea  far  below,  and  the  road,  ever  turning  and  bending 
but  holding  to  this  lofty  height  above  the  water,  was 
often  a  narrow  line  between  hedges  or  walls  and  often 
ran  beside  private  parks  of  dewy,  leafy  greenness 
with  their  great  trees.  And  we  stopped  at  a  particu- 
larly beautiful  point  to  eat  our  luncheon;  often  and 
often  we  were  to  enjoy  these  impromptu  luncheons, 
with  strawberries  or  apricots  or  cherries — there  were 
never  any  other  possibilities  of  edible  fruit  to  the 
American  taste — and  always  with  zest  and  enjoy- 
ment at  precisely  the  spots  where  we  could  lingeringly 
enjoy  some  fine  flavor  of  scenery  or  countryside. 
And  we  made  a  point  of  preparing  for  these  delight- 
ful al  fresco  affairs  by  purchases  at  some  time  in  the 
forenoon,  at  the  likeliest-looking  place  possible, 
rather  than  to  wait  and  delay  for  luncheon  at  some 
inn,  where  the  hour  of  our  arrival  and  the  hour  at 
which  they  saw  fit  to  serve  a  luncheon  were  impos- 
sible to  harmonize.  Thus  we  had  the  middle  of  the 
day  thoroughly  in  our  own  control  rather  than  at  the 
mercy  of  the  innkeepers.  This  plan  also  left  us  free 
and  ready  to  indulge  in  afternoon  tea  at  the  tea- 
shops  or  tea  gardens  as  we  came  to  them,  in  the  course 
of  the  afternoon,  for  at  such  places  the  service  is 
prompt. 

And  we  left  the  sea  and  the  heights,  and  descended 


WENDING  A  WELSH  WAY 37 

to  an  immaculately  clean  and  new-looking  watering- 
place  named  from  the  bay,  Colwyn  Bay,  where  no 
one  seemed  to  be  doing  anything  in  particular,  but 
where  everyone  seemed  to  be  having  a  satisfactorily 
good  time,  and  soon  we  were  passing  over  beauti- 
fully widening  Conway  River,  by  a  sort  of  causeway 
bridge,  and  went  through  a  gate  in  the  town  wall,  a 
gate  so  narrow  that  not  only  could  two  motors  not 
pass,  but  it  seemed  as  if  even  a  very  thin  man  and 
the  motor  could  not  pass,  and  we  were  inside  an- 
other of  the  few  walled  towns  of  Great  Britain  and 
beside  a  castle  of  huge  immensity. 

The  old  man  who  took  our  threepence  each  for  en- 
trance was  eager  to  watch  the  car  while  we  were 
inside,  and  we  remember  looking  down  from  the  bat- 
tlements a  little  later  and  seeing  him  standing  ear- 
nestly, leaning  on  his  cane,  the  very  picture  of  a 
faithful  watchman ;  and  from  the  battlements  we  saw 
much  more  than  a  faithful  watchman,  for  we  saw  the 
picturesque  streets  and  the  ancient  homes  and  we 
saw  the  river  and  its  broadened  bay. 

The  walls  of  the  castle,  from  twelve  to  fifteen  feet 
thick,  the  eight  massive  round  towers,  the  great  halls 
of  the  interior,  the  stupendousness  of  it  all,  are  tre- 
mendously effective 

There  was  the  old  High  Street  to  motor  through, 
and  the  oldest  house  to  be  glanced  at,  and  an  ancient 
and  well-preserved  town  house,  with  wonderful  ceil- 
ings, to  be  seen  before  continuing  on  our  road;  and 
a  splendidly  delightful  road  it  was,  now  running  won- 
derfully through  a  narrow  valley  set  low  among 
great  heights  and  now  rounding  out  upon  an  open 
stretch  of  water,  and  climbing  higher  and  higher  to 
give  us  the  view.  Blue  water  set  with  islands ;  glori- 
ous and  exhilarating  whirling  around  headlands  and 
gliding  along  at  the  very  edge  of  the  water  and  at 
the  very  base  of  cliffs  that  rise  far  above,  and  pass- 


38 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

ing  slate  quarries  high  up  on  the  great  cliffs;  the 
largest  slate  quarries  in  the  world  being  hereabouts, 
and  with  the  aspect  now  and  then  of  whole  mountains 
removed,  not  by  faith  but  slate;  and  with  mountains 
of  debris.  And  thus  to  Bangor,  fourteen  miles  from 
Conway,  fourteen  miles  of  splendid  pleasure  and  with 
an  added  sense  of  the  great  horizons  of  motoring! — 
the  ever-changing  horizons  that  are  such  a  keen  and 
constant  delight. 

A  quiet  place  is  Bangor,  but  it  was  there  that  we 
somehow  came  to  an  impression  of  Wales  as  a  na- 
tion by  itself,  a  people  with  earnest  self-centered  in- 
terests and  affairs;  and  a  very  practical  folk  in 
worldly  affairs,  yet  at  the  same  time  a  people  who 
still  honor  their  poets  and  singers,  and  particularly 
the  poets ;  and  at  Bangor  they  were  preparing  a  great 
structure  for  a  coming  Eisteddfod  (to  pronounce  this 
word  just  as  the  Welsh  do,  and  without  apparent 
effort,  makes  a  stranger  free  of  the  best  the  land  can 
offer!),  the  Eisteddfod  being  the  recurrent  festival 
of  poets  and  minstrels  and  musicians,  and  attracting 
thousands  upon  thousands  of  Welsh  to  these  week- 
long  gatherings. 

We  glanced  at  the  cathedral,  notable  in  that  it  is 
perhaps  the  plainest  and  most  unattractive  of  them 
all,  and  at  white-clad  men  playing  cricket  in  a  green 
field  near  by,  and  went  along  by  the  sand-bordered 
Menai  Straits  and  looked  at  the  tubular  bridge,  once 
world-famous,  leading  over  to  the  island  of  Anglesey, 
and  wondered  who  went  over  to  that  big  and  prac- 
tically forgotten  island;  and  we  remembered,  before 
leaving  Bangor,  that  its  name  is  commemorated  by 
its  faithful  sons  in  the  slate  districts  of  both  Maine 
and  Pennsylvania. 

A  few  miles  beyond  Bangor  we  passed  road  re- 
pairers elaborately  at  work ;  first  we  came  to  a  stretch 
of  wet  tar,  and  next  to  a  pebbled  stretch,  this  giving 


WENDING  A  WELSH  WAY 39 

the  tires  an  artistic  pebble-dash  effect ;  and,  if  we  have 
not  said  anything  thus  far  about  the  roads,  it  has  not 
been  because  they  are  not  worth  writing  about,  but 
to  see  first  how  well  they  maintained  their  average. 

And  they  are  wonderful  roads!  Smooth,  without 
holes  and  free  from  little  stones — motoring  in  Great 
•Britain  is  like  motoring  on  a  never-ending  series  of 
smooth  floors.  And  this  is  because,  in  the  first  place, 
the  roads  are  splendidly  built;  and,  in  the  second 
place,  because  they  are  kept  in  repair  with  never- 
ceasing  vigilance. 

And  we  speak  of  the  roads  just  now  because  it 
was  a  few  miles  out  of  Bangor  that  we  noticed  for 
the  first  time  on  the  trip  broken  glass  on  the  road; 
a  broken  bottle  it  was,  and  it  was  an  experience  so 
seldom  repeated  as  to  be  notable. 

It  was  evening,  but  still  it  was  light.  In  a  fine  run 
of  ten  miles,  past  many  a  great  walled  estate  with 
its  great  park  and  its  great  trees  around  a  great 
house,  we  came  to  Carnarvon,  a  busy,  clean  town,  with 
the  streets  thronged  with  people  and  the  air  full  of 
a  chirring  hum  of  talk ;  which  talk,  as  we  were  to  dis- 
cover, was  mostly  Welsh!  It  was  a  modern-seeming 
street  down  which  we  went  to  our  hotel,  and  twisting, 
as  we  should  expect  it  to  do  in  an  ancient  town.  Old- 
fashioned  folk  did  not  like  the  street  called  Straight ! 

At  the  hotel,  a  once-while  coaching  inn  which  com- 
bines an  old-time  air  with  modern  conveniences,  we 
had  a  delightful  dinner.  We  even  achieved  the  fa- 
mous pink  salmon  and  green  cucumber  on  a  white 
plate!  There  was  a  quaint  little  bar  with  rows  of 
shining  brass  and  copper  measures  and  a  pretty, 
modest-looking  barmaid,  and  little  square  smoking- 
room  with  red-leather  settees,  and  cupboards  of  old 
china  for  upper-hall  decoration  and  a  garage  with 
high-walled  inclosures,  topped  with  spikes  and  broken 
glass. 


40 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

But  all  the  time  we  felt  that  the  town  was  curi- 
ously not  coming  up  to  expectations.  Here  it  was, 
bright,  prosperous,  busy,  mostly  modern,  and  yet  we 
had  gone  to  Carnarvon  solely  because  of  there  being 
at  that  place  one  of  the  greatest  castled  ruins  of  the 
world.  And  we  have  seen  no  castle!  After  dinner, 
it  being  light  though  very  late,  we  strolled  out,  and 
went  farther  down  the  busy,  modern  street,  our  won- 
der increasing;  then  suddenly,  as  we  turned  a  corner, 
across  an  open  square  and  right  in  front  of  us,  there 
stood  an  enormous  castle!  It  was  all  so  unexpected! 
There  was  no  gradual  leading  up  to  it  with  ancient 
houses ;  nothing  to  tell  that  the  castle  was  right  there 
till  the  very  corner  was  turned.  Carnarvon  is  a  place 
for  an  impression. 


WiTHIX    THE    BARE    SHELL    OF   CaRXARVON 


A    MOrXTAIN    ROAD    UNDER    SnOWDOX 


,..#« 


.irf% 


^-m 


A  LoxELY  Welsh  cottage 


Harlech  Castle 


CHAPTER  V 

ON   TO   HARLECH 

WE  did  not  try  really  to  see  Carnarv^on  Castle, 
except  to  get  a  sense  of  its  exterior,  until 
the  next  morning.  And  one  does  not  wish 
for  many  statistics  about  such  a  structure;  one  does 
not  care  just  how  many  centuries  it  stood,  or  how 
many  sieges  it  sustained,  or  just  how  large  it  is;  it 
is  the  tremendous  size  and  strength  of  it,  the  tremen- 
dous impression  of  feudahsm,  that  count. 

But  there  are  some  details  that  are  really  neces- 
sary to  an  adequate  comprehension  of  such  a  place, 
and  that  the  banquet  hall  has  the  noble  length  of  one 
hundred  feet  and  is  forty- four  feet  wide,  with  a  splen- 
did height  of  forty,  is  one  of  them ;  and  even  the  most 
unimaginative  cannot  but  realize  what  scenes  there 
must  have  been  in  that  magnificent  room,  now  a  bare 
stone  shell.  By  contrast,  it  may  be  said  that  the  room 
in  which  the  first  English  Prince  of  Wales  was  born 
is  of  the  tiny  dimensions  of  only  twelve  feet  by  eight! 
A  comfortable  room  it  must  have  been,  though,  with 
its  still  existent  fireplace  and  the  hangings  and  floor 
coverings  which  long  since  disappeared.  For  it  is 
a  great  mistake  to  think  of  the  people  of  the  Middle 
Ages  as  living  in  rooms  of  cold,  bare  stone.  That  im- 
pression naturally  comes  because  we  see  the  buildings 
of  the  feudal  times  dismantled  and  bare,  but  when 
these  buildings  were  used  they  were  lived  in  with 
great  comfort,  not  only  by  rough  soldiers,  but  by 
ladies  who  wore  superb  gowns  and  jewels  and  knew 
how  to  keep  warm.     Of  course  they  did  not  have 

41 


42 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

American  steam  heat,  nor  did  they  have  the  equiva- 
lent of  it,  but  so  far  as  that  is  concerned  they  do  not 
have  it  in  England  even  yet.  Now,  we  do  not  mean 
that  the  feudal  times  gave  comforts  equal  to  those  of 
to-day,  but  that  they  did  really  give  a  great  deal  of 
coziness  and  comfort,  and  that  this  particular  little 
room  would  be  very  cozy,  indeed. 

Edward  the  First,  by  the  way,  great  fighter  that 
he  was,  is  seldom  thought  of  as  a  humorist,  yet  he 
seems  to  have  had  something  of  the  humorist  in  him, 
after  all.  After  having  the  last  Welsh  Prince  of 
Wales  rather  summarily  disposed  of,  he  tried  to  ap- 
pease the  Welsh  people  by  promising  them  a  prince 
who  should  be  born  in  their  own  country  and  who 
could  not  speak  a  word  of  English,  and  one  can 
imagine  with  what  delight  this  promise  was  received. 
Well,  when  his  son  was  born  at  Carnarvon,  he  had 
him  at  once  shown  to  the  people  and  promptly  and 
publicly  proclaimed  as  Prince  of  Wales ;  and  the  son 
and  heir  certainly  fulfilled  both  of  the  promised  con- 
ditions! And  at  the  death  of  Edward  the  First  his 
own  statue — and  this  must  have  been  by  his  personal 
order — was  placed  over  Carnarvon  Castle  entrance, 
and  it  represented  him  with  his  sword  half  drawn. 
At  once  the  Welsh  were  in  a  fury:  "  King  Edward 
is  drawing  his  sword  upon  us  even  when  dead!  "  they 
cried;  whereupon,  "  No,"  was  the  quieting  response, 
"  he  is  simply  sheathing  it!  "  And  as  the  Welsh  did 
not  know  which  way  was  really  meant,  and  they 
couldn't  settle  it,  they  let  it  quietly  go  at  that,  and 
let  the  statue  stand. 

The  little  rooms  and  big;  the  elaborate  ancient  wa- 
ter supply,  and  the  deep  wells  with  pipes  of  lead  or 
stone  running  here  and  there;  the  many  towers,  not 
round  like  those  of  Conway,  but  pentagonal,  hex- 
agonal, octagonal;  the  intricate  passages,  the  huge- 
ness and  impressiveness  of  it  all,  the  walls  of  the 


ON  TO  HARLECH 43 

thickness  of  fifteen  feet,  unite  to  arouse  a  tremendous 
picture  of  the  tremendous  past. 

And  striking  things  may  be  done  in  such  a  castle 
even  in  these  modern  days;  for  it  was  as  recently  as 
1911  that  the  present  Prince  of  Wales  was  given  his 
formal  investiture  there — oddly  enough,  in  view  of 
the  history  of  the  castle,  the  first  such  investiture  in 
history — and  at  that  time  seventeen  thousand  people 
were  gathered  inside  of  the  walls. 

When  we  were  there  repairs  were  in  progress,  neces- 
sitating the  putting  in  of  new  beams,  and  beams  for 
the  purpose  had  been  brought  from  Canada,  beams 
of  oak,  one  of  them  weighing — at  least  so  the  fore- 
man said,  but  he  may  have  been  under  the  influence 
of  the  memory  of  Edward  the  Joker — eight  and 
three-quarter  tons;  and  it  certainly  was  the  biggest 
beam  that  either  of  us  ever  saw. 

The  thousands  of  men  who  worked  in  building  this 
great  structure  received  two  pennies  apiece  a  day. 
That  the  labor  was  compulsory  and  that  there  was 
no  striking  for  higher  wages  may  well  be  believed; 
a  strike  on  the  part  of  the  workmen  would  have  made 
the  soldiers  strike  them,  as  one  of  the  party  remarked ; 
but  the  architect  was  given  the  princely  remuneration 
of  twelve  shillings  a  week.  And  the  way  in  which  he 
provided  places  for  the  ingenious  downpouring  of 
melted  lead  and  clever  apertures  for  crossbow  shoot- 
ing, to  welcome  the  coming  and  speed  the  parting 
guests,  are  alone  sufficient  to  show  that  he  well  earned 
his  salary. 

From  Carnarvon  we  turned  southward,  and  we 
went  up  a  long,  long  hill — some  three  miles  of  climb- 
ing— and  then,  looking  back,  there  was  a  magnificent 
sweep  of  view,  and  in  front  of  us  were  towering  twin 
and  purple  peaks  that  guarded  a  pass. 

And  a  winding  road  led  us  through  this  pass,  with 
great  bare  mountains  on  either  side  and  a  swirling 


44 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

stream  beside  us;  and  when  we  stopped  for  a  few 
moments  in  the  midst  of  that  loneliness,  there  was 
not  a  sound  but  the  cawing  of  a  few  rooks  and  the 
distant  intermittent  bleating  of  a  few  sheep.  Snow- 
don,  the  highest  of  all  the  Welsh  mountains,  loomed 
in  front  of  us,  lofty  and  grand.  Narrow  and  fre- 
quently twisting,  the  road  led  on,  with  steep  grades 
up  or  down,  with  rocky  gorges  beside  us,  thick  with 
bluebells  and  fern,  and  with  rarely  a  solitary  house 
to  be  seen ;  and  near  one  such  solitary  little  house  we 
lunched,  beside  a  rocky  pool  near  the  road,  where  the 
stream  expanded  in  deep  green  breadth  and  where 
precipitous  heights  and  hoary-looking  woods  were 
all  about  us. 

In  front  of  the  lonely  little  cottage  was  a  tiny  sign, 
"  Tea  and  Hot  Water  " ;  a  characteristic  sign,  this, 
of  picturesque  places  in  Great  Britain,  and  meant  to 
show  that  hot  water  will  be  furnished  to  those  whose 
taste  demands  that  they  carry  their  own  tea  rather 
than  trust  to  cottage  quality.  The  roof  of  the  cot- 
tage was  entirely  covered  with  ivy  so  ancient  that 
its  stems  were  enormous  in  thickness,  and  it  lay  there 
in  a  mass  fully  two  feet  deep,  and  beside  the  cot- 
tage there  grew  bush  fuchsias  in  plants  rising  eight 
feet  high  and  bearing  showers  of  magenta  blossoms. 
The  living  greenery  effaced  the  cottage  and  made  it 
look  like  a  wild  habitation.  The  interior  of  this  tiny 
cottage,  with  its  thick  stone  walls,  was  just  two  tiny 
little  rooms,  and  there  was  an  old  Welsh  dresser  of 
oak  on  the  stone  floor,  and  a  disproportionately  big, 
dark  fireplace,  with  the  tiniest  of  fires  glowing  in  its 
depths  to  boil  the  water,  and  tiny  little  windows  with 
tiny  diamond  panes  of  greenish  glass. 

And  there  were  literally  flies  in  that  scenic  oint- 
ment ;  they  were  on  a  few  cattle  which  came  wander- 
ing up  to  the  pool  to  drink,  and  they  thick-covered 
them  and  tortured  them  worse  than  we  had  ever  seen 


ON  TO  HARLECH 45 

fly-torture  in  America ;  but  the  cattle,  with  their  flies, 
wandered  off  after  a  little,  and  again  we  were  in 
solitariness  among  the  mountains,  except  for  the 
widow  effaced  behind  her  fuchsias.  And  then  we  were 
surprised  to  notice  an  artist  hard  at  work  on  a  jut- 
ting rock,  and  quite  astonished  when,  in  a  woodland 
path  on  the  other  side  of  the  stream,  there  came  into 
view  a  couple  of  lovers,  short-skirted  and  knicker- 
bockered  (if  one  may  use  a  Washington  Irving  word 
about  an  Englishman  on  a  holiday  in  Wales)  ;  and  we 
were  positively  amazed  when,  around  a  curve  in  the 
road,  there  came  into  view  two  banting  and  panting 
women  armed  with  walking-sticks  and  with  pedome- 
ters audibly  ticking.  The  call  of  the  car,  the  eternal 
lure  of  the  highway,  had  been  upon  us  even  before 
we  were  thus  forced  to  realize  that  our  supposedly 
solitary  paradise  was  in  reality  near  some  mountain 
hotel;  and  again  we  started  off,  and  in  a  little  while 
we  came  to  the  hotel  itself,  all  wistaria  covered  and 
shaded  by  trees,  and  with  immense  delight  we  found 
it  to  be  "  The  Royal  Goat " ;  Use  majeste,  if  there 
ever  was! 

And  we  found  not  only  the  Royal  Goat,  but  a  vil- 
lage, a  beautifully  located  little  place,  bearing  the 
name  of  Beddgelert.  And  in  a  world  which  offers 
so  many  places  named  from  varied  degrees  of  man- 
kind, it  is  refreshing  to  find  at  least  one  place,  and 
so  beautiful  a  place,  named  from  a  faithful  dog,  and 
in  remembrance  of  a  national  hero's  cruel  hastiness! 
< — for  here  the  famous  Llewelyn  one  day  left  his  child 
in  charge  of  his  dog  Gelert  and,  returning,  met 
Gelert  all  covered  with  blood  and  instantly  killed  him, 
thinking  he  had  killed  the  child,  only  to  find,  a  few 
moments  too  late,  that  Gelert  had  killed  a  wolf  at 
the  child's  very  side.  The  very  spot  where  Gelert 
was  buried  is  still  pointed  out. 

The  road  led  us  superbly  on,  and  a  little  to  the 


46 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAUST 

south  we  came  to  the  wonderful  pass  of  Aberglasllyn, 
with  its  tremendous  walls  of  rock,  with  its  rushing 
river  and  its  mighty  trees,  all  overhung  by  a  sky  most 
brilliantly  blue.  And  there  was  such  delight  in  the 
splendid  mountain  air  and  in  the  wonderful  exhila- 
ration of  it  all !  And  we  went  on,  following  the  twist- 
ings  and  turnings  of  the  road,  with  a  curious  sense  as 
of  turning  the  elbows  of  mountains. 

A  few  miles  more  of  winding,  with  a  constant  im- 
pression of  retaining  walls,  and  of  heights  and  depths, 
and  of  streams  hurrying  in  their  rocky  beds,  and  of 
all  the  glory  and  freedom  of  the  mountains,  and  of 
grades  that  were  long  and  easy  and  of  roads  that 
were  marvelously  smooth  (as  well  made,  those  roads, 
and  as  well  kept,  in  that  lonely  and  sparsely  settled 
region,  as  they  could  be  in  a  region  of  private  parks 
and  wealthy  living!),  and  all  at  once  we  came  to  an- 
other town,  by  a  precipitous  drop  of  the  road  through 
a  narrow  street,  with  close-built  houses  up  to  its  very 
edge;  our  first  experience  of  the  sharp  descents  in 
British  roads,  where  the  grades  of  ancient  pack-horse 
days  remain;  and  we  went  on  through  a  town  that 
was  dozing  in  a  mid-day  rest;  a  town  inhabited,  but 
with  a  positively  ghostly  effect  as  of  enchantment, 
for  there  was  not  a  soul  to  be  seen  nor  a  voice  to  be 
heard.  And  we  reached  a  long  bridge,  a  toll  bridge, 
and  we  asked  the  name  of  the  water,  imposing  in  its 
tidal  width,  over  which  the  long  bridge  stretched,  and 
in  reply  came  consonants  in  such  a  sibilant  ripple 
as  showed  us  practically  that  Welsh  is  still  a  spoken 
tongue. 

We  were  approaching  Harlech;  a  name  that  had 
always  gone  marching  stirringly  through  our  minds, 
although  neither  of  us  has  any  portion  of  Welsh 
blood.  And  we  were  newly  stirred,  as  we  went  on, 
not  only  by  the  fact  that  we  were  actually  approach- 
ing Harlech,  but  by  the  practical  realization  that  it 


ON  TO  HARLECH 47 

is  an  actual  and  existent  place  and  not  merely  a  name 
in  a  battle  song. 

We  had  come  down  into  a  region  of  miles  and  miles 
of  sweeping  yellow  sand,  and  of  great  salt-water 
meadows  that  stretched  away  interminably,  for  the 
sea  was  now  at  hand.  And  then  the  road  became 
a  long,  arcaded  way,  with  branches  meeting  overhead 
of  beech  and  larch  trees,  with  ivy  covering  their  trunks 
and  ferns  growing  thick  in  the  shadows. 

And  the  road  emerged  from  the  tree-made  tunnel, 
and  beside  it  were  hundreds  of  hawthorns  and  rhodo- 
dendrons in  bloom;  and  whirling  around  a  corner 
came  an  Englishman  in  an  automobile  at  fifty  miles 
an  hour,  and  he  neither  slowed  nor  moved  to  one 
side,  but  left  us  to  dodge  him  as  best  we  might.  And 
the  road  led  up  a  long  and  sweeping  grade  and  we 
were  in  Harlech,  the  very  town  of  the  "  Men  of 
Harlech"! 

A  village  old  and  poor  it  is,  but  with  bravery  of 
aspect;  a  village  rather  bleak,  and  with  a  sort  of 
swept-bare  look ;  even  three  hundred  years  ago  an  old 
record  set  down  that  it  was  "  a  very  poore  towne, 
having  no  trade  or  traphicke";  a  village  without 
present-day  trade  or  manufactures,  and  entirely  with- 
out the  bright  new  villas  that  would  be  fatal  to  the 
looks  of  a  place  with  such  a  reputation; — and  the 
roadway  was  full  of  Httle  children  playing  games 
in  Welsh. 

Beside  the  village  is  the  ancient  castle,  and  it  was 
standing  here  when  the  forever-stirring  marching 
song  was  written.  It  rises  in  isolated  dignity,  from 
its  jutting  headland  of  rock.  Its  noble  entrance- way 
leads  between  round  towers,  and,  once  inside,  it  is 
as  if  one  were  back  again  in  the  heart  of  the  Middle 
Ages.  Its  somber,  splendid,  massive  dignity  makes 
it,  standing  four-square  upon  its  noble  outlook,  a  castle 
of  one's  dreams.     And  you  hear  nothing  but  the 


48 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAUST 

screaming  cries  of  the  seabirds  that,  disturbed  by  the 
intrusion  of  the  twentieth  century,  go  circhng  about 
the  towered  ruin  or  diving  through  impossible  cran- 
nies to  their  nests;  nothing  but  the  cries  of  the  birds 
and  a  sullen  booming  undertone  of  sound  which  is 
the  voice  of  the  sea,  telling  what  the  Harlech  song- 
maker  had  in  mind  when  he  wrote  of  the  "  sound  like 
rushing  billows,"  and  "  the  surge  on  surge  that  rush- 
ing follow,  battle's  distant  sound  " ;  and  here  at  Har- 
lech the  sounds  of  the  sea  and  of  battle  have  sternly 
commingled.  Over  yonder  is  the  sea,  and  you  see 
it  ripphng  against  the  shore  in  long  white-crested 
lines. 

It  has  a  brave  old  history,  this  castle,  and  its  great 
inner  courtyard  was  in  olden  days  very  different  from 
its  present  aspect,  thick  grown  as  it  now  is  with  grass 
with  daisies  pied;  a  piquant  contrast,  this,  to  what 
must  have  been  its  fiercely  martial  aspect  when  it  was 
the  last  castle  in  England  or  Wales  to  hold  out  for  the 
House  of  Lancaster  and  the  last  in  Wales  to  hold  out 
for  Charles  the  First. 

Perhaps  its  finest  story  is  that,  told  in  ancient 
chronicles,  of  a  siege  far  back  in  the  1400's,  when  it 
was  held  by  a  certain  David  ap  levan  ap  Eignion 
against  Sir  Richard  Herbert.  Herbert  summoned 
David  to  surrender,  but  David,  who  had  served  a 
great  deal  in  the  wars  in  France,  quaintly  replied 
that,  as  he  had  once  held  a  French  fortress  long 
enough  to  make  all  the  old  women  in  Wales  talk 
about  him,  he  thought  he  ought  now  to  hold  this 
Welsh  fortress  long  enough  for  all  the  old  w^omen  in 
France  to  begin  talking  about  him.  But  in  spite  of 
quaintly  brave  words  and  a  defense  that  was  even 
braver,  surrender  was  necessary  after  all,  but  Sir 
Richard,  mightily  impressed  by  the  sturdy  qualities 
of  David  with  the  two  aps,  promised  to  use  all  pos- 
sible influence  with  the  king  to  save  his  life;  it  being 


The  old  oak  settle  ix  the  inx  at  Cemmaes 


The  clipped  box  gahdexs  of  Powis 


Deer  photographed  from  the  motor,  in  a  castle  park 


A    WINDING    STREET   IN    ANCIENT    SHREWSBURY 


ON  TO  HARLECH 49 

the  agreeable  custom  of  those  days  to  kill  captives 
who  had  shown  special  warlike  qualities.  But  the 
king  (it  was  Edward  the  Fourth)  demurred  to  the 
appeal,  whereupon  Sir  Richard  demanded  either  that 
the  king  take  his,  Sir  Richard's,  life,  in  lieu  of  the 
life  of  David,  or  else,  better  still,  that  he  put  David 
back  again  within  the  walls  of  Harlech  and  set  some- 
one else  to  take  him  out!  And  to  such  an  alternative 
of  demand  the  king,  himself  a  good  fighting  man, 
with  good  humor  yielded,  and  David's  life  was 
saved. 

From  the  dizzy  wall  at  the  precipice  edge,  Harlech 
Castle  looks  over  great  reaches  of  level  plain,  far 
below,  and  across  the  great  sand  dunes  to  the  sea  that 
goes  stretching  gloriously  to  the  far  horizon;  and 
away  off  to  the  right  there  rises  a  long  and  mighty 
line  of  mountains,  with  summits  crenelated  against 
the  sky. 

And  not  far  away,  on  a  little  hillock  in  view  from 
the  castle,  is  an  old-looking  house  which  was  the  house 
of  a  certain  Wynne,  a  poet  who  flourished  about  the 
year  1700,  and  the  people  of  the  town  will  tell  you, 
with  enthusiasm,  that  he  was  the  author  of  a  book 
renowned  in  literature,  "  The  Vision  of  the  Sleeping 
Rard,"  or,  as  they  express  it — and  by  this  you  will 
again  feel  sure  that  you  are  really  among  the  men 
of  Harlech — "  Gweledigaethau  y  Bardd  Cwsg"! 

But  at  any  rate,  as  one  of  us  said,  our  car  was  cer- 
tainly not  a  sleeping  bard ;  and  soon  we  were  on  our 
way  again,  soon  we  were  again  responding  to  the 
never-ceasing  lure  of  distances.  And  we  bore  with 
us  from  Harlech  an  ineffaceable  memory. 


CHAPTER  VI 

THROUGH   SHREWSBURY 

WE  were  to  aim,  in  a  general  way,  through  the 
very  heart  of  Wales  and  back  into  England 
by  way  of  Shrewsbury;  and  we  remem- 
bered that  it  was  in  this  northern  portion  of  Wales 
that  Lloyd  George  was  born,  and  it  was  interesting 
to  notice  the  absolute  devotion  with  which  most  of 
the  people  spoke  of  him  and  the  malevolence  of  the 
smaller  number  who  as  frankly  and  as  absolutely 
hated  him.  And  as  one  should  always  be  willing  to 
believe  an  excellent  story  without  too  suspiciously 
questioning  its  details,  we  were  quite  willing  to  be- 
lieve the  genial  Welshman  who  said  to  us  that  when 
he  told  an  old  man,  his  neighbor,  that  King  Edward 
the  Seventh  was  dead,  the  old  man  asked,  "  Then 
who'll  be  the  new  king?"  To  which  our  genial  ac- 
quaintance of  course  replied,  "  George,"  whereat  the 
old  man  nodded  wisely  and  said:  "  I'm  not  surprised; 
no,  I'm  not  surprised;  I've  watched  him  ever  since 
he  was  a  small  boy  here  and  I'm  not  surprised." 

And  now  there  came  the  matter  of  a  few  very 
pleasant  miles  along  a  coastwise  road,  but  the  road 
was  so  narrow  and  so  confined  and  had  such  sudden 
and  often  hairpin  curves,  in  unbelievable  number 
that,  with  the  stone  walls  close  on  either  side,  it  was 
really  very  dangerous.  And  the  sea  slipped  by  us 
on  the  right  and  the  great  hills  slipped  by  us  on  the 
left,  and  there  were  ruins  and  peasants'  cottages,  and 
numberless  rhododendrons  on  numberless  banks — but 
never  on  a  poor  man's  bank! — and  we  were  in  Bar- 

50 


THROUGH  SHREWSBURY 51 

mouth,  a  town  that  rises,  tier  above  tier,  in  tall  houses 
all  clean  and  bright,  a  town  looking  out  over  the  sea 
and  curious  in  having  nothing  whatever  of  landward 
view. 

Barmouth  is  a  watering-place  and  its  houses  did 
not  grow  there,  but  were  built  for  seaside  visitors — 
a  condition  that  precludes  the  romantic  and,  though 
it  should  not,  even  the  beautiful.  Barmouth  is  a 
study  in  contentment ;  it  is  a  place  without  piquancy, 
a  place  where  nothing  is  going  on,  where  nothing  has 
ever  gone  on ;  a  place  where  old  ladies  and  gentlemen 
go  about  with  infinite  sedateness  and  where  there  is 
a  general  atmosphere  of  little  walks  taken  very  seri- 
ously, of  afternoon  teas  at  inviolable  hours  and  of 
interminable  knitting.  It  is  a  place  where  there  is 
nothing  to  do  and  where  the  sojourners  take  delight- 
ful comfort  in  doing  it.  Everybody  seems  so  peace- 
fully content  that  it  might  well  be  a  town  of  pussy- 
cats basking  in  the  sun,  but  it  gives  positive  pleasure 
to  the  casual  American  in  showing  as  it  does  that  it 
is  possible  for  the  older  people  to  be  of  consequence 
and  that  the  younger  folk  and  their  affairs  may  well 
be  secondary. 

At  the  edge  of  Barmouth  is  a  great  basin,  the 
widened  mouth  of  a  tidal  river,  and  we  turn  our  backs 
to  the  afternoon  sun  and  follow  a  road  beside  the 
stream,  silvered  as  it  is  in  the  sunlight,  that  winds 
for  miles  between  broad  levels  of  yellow  sand  that 
go  stretching  far  off  to  mountains  that  are  green  right 
down  to  where  the  yellow  sand  comes  up  to  them. 

Up  in  these  blue  and  green  mountains  we  came 
to  Dolgelly,  an  unattractive  and  bare  town  in  the 
heart  of  a  fascinating  region,  and  all  about  were  lush 
growth  and  splendid  heights  that  were  beautifully 
effective  in  outline;  not  like  the  Rockies  in  height, 
not  even  equal  to  the  White  Mountains,  but  rising  so 
quickly  from  sea  level  as  to  have  a  tremendous  effect 


52 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIiST 

of  far  more  than  their  actual  altitude.  After  all, 
Snowdon  itself,  with  its  great  reputation  as  a  high 
mountain,  the  highest  south  of  the  Scottish  line,  rises 
only  to  3,560  feet! 

We  say  an  unattractive  town,  and  yet  Dolgelly 
is  a  place  of  individuality,  a  place  that  is  Welsh  for 
the  Welsh  and  not  for  the  English  visitor;  a  place 
where  the  men  walk  in  heavy-shoed,  sober-clad  aus- 
terity and  where  the  shovel-hatted  clergyman  bows 
and  is  saluted  by  every  passer-by  and  where  the 
market-place  is  sibilant  and  murmurous  with  "  U's," 
this  double  consonant  being  pronounced  in  Welsh  by 
beginning  as  if  to  pronounce  a  single  "  1 "  and  turn- 
ing it  into  a  sound  as  if  blowing  on  hot  soup.  It  is 
a  town  where  Welsh  is  still  a  familiar  language,  and 
yet  in  this  remote  Welsh  place  there  is  a  well- 
uniformed  policeman  at  the  end  of  the  market-place 
from  whom  the  stranger  may  ask  questions  as  to  roads 
and  be  set  on  his  way. 

Not  far  beyond  Dolgelly  we  were  to  make  a  turn 
toward  a  pass,  at  Cross  Foxes ; — how  important  these 
catch-points  are  for  the  hour ! — and  we  inquired  from 
hard-to-find  and  hard-to-talk-to  laborers  who  could 
only  speak  Welsh,  and  we  looked  and  we  worried  for 
Cross  Foxes — the  cross-Fox-River- when-we-come-to- 
it  buzzing  in  our  minds.  And  finally  we  found  it,  a 
quiet,  very  remote  inn  at  a  road  junction  of  obscure 
directions  which  did  not  fit  either  the  map  or  the 
policeman's  route,  but  Dinas  Mawddwy  was  our 
destination  on  the  Shrewsbury  road.  Beyond  Dol- 
gelly we  had  begun  to  climb,  by  long  sweeps  that 
alternated  with  levels,  and  it  seemed  as  if  we  should 
never  reach  the  top.  We  did  not  at  first  realize  that 
we  were  probably  climbing  the  backbone  of  Wales 
and  we  certainly  learned  that  Wales  had  plenty  of 
backbone.  The  water  in  the  radiator  would  persist 
in  boiling  now  and  then  as  we  climbed,  and  there  were 


THROUGH  SHREWSBURY 53 

stops  for  seeking  for  brooks  and  springs  for  refilling 
— as  the  car  panteth  after  the  water  brooks,  so  to 
speak — and  each  stop  gave  us  occasion  and  excuse  to 
take  another  long  look  at  the  ever-widening  view. 
The  solitude  of  the  road  was  very  marked;  not  only 
were  there  no  houses,  but  there  seemed  to  be  few 
travelers.  We  kept  seeing  the  blue  and  chair-shaped 
summit  of  Cader  Idris  from  different  points  of  view 
— the  special  mountain  of  this  region,  as  Snowdon  is 
the  special  one  of  farther  north.  And  we  learned  in 
this  climb  a  point  of  much  practical  importance, 
which  was  always  to  keep  the  bottles  of  water  full, 
for  very  often  in  Great  Britain  water  is  surprisingly 
hard  to  find  and  too  often  hard  when  you  find  it! 
Too  often  it  is  undesirable  on  account  of  limy  qual- 
ity or  else  is  full  of  peaty  or  grassy  sediment.  The 
wayside  watering  trough  for  horses  is  not  a  British 
institution. 

The  car  climbed  admirably  and  ever  the  reward 
was  greater  and  greater  in  increasing  greatness  of 
view,  until  the  summit,  known  as  Cold  Door  Pass 
or  Bwich  Oerddrws  (we  chose  to  call  it  "  Cold 
Door"!),  was  reached  and  we  looked  over  miles  of 
glory  in  a  glitter  of  bright  sunlight. 

And  then  came  the  descent.  The  ascent  had  been 
gradual,  with  its  long  levels  alternating  with  the  ris- 
ing grades,  and  had  been  a  rise  spread  over  miles  and 
always  along  a  two-sided  road.  But  the  descent  was 
immediate,  one-sided,  steep;  it  was  a  constant  and 
steep  curving  downward  on  an  unprotected  road  and 
always  with  the  possibility  of  tumbling  far  down  if 
control  of  the  car  should  be  momentarily  lost  at  one 
of  the  unexpected  curves.  The  first  downward  curve 
would  have  meant  a  drop  of  a  thousand  feet.  But 
it  was  all  so  glorious!  It  was  rugged  and  wild  and 
of  fascinating  dreariness,  with  sweeping  views  along 
a  lovely  valley  opening  in  front,  and  with  now  and  then 


54     TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

an  aeroplanish  view  of  a  house  nooked  solitary,  far 
below. 

Night  was  coming  on.  We  could  see  the  dusky 
twilight  gathering  in  uncanny  shadows  down  in  the 
valley  and  the  air  was  growing  chill  and  we  were 
frankly  hungry. 

That  road  was  perhaps  two  miles  of  unbroken  de- 
scent; the  trouble  is  that  the  explorer  never  starts 
to  measure  with  the  speedometer  at  the  beginning 
of  such  a  road,  for  at  the  beginning  he  does  not  know 
that  he  is  to  be  interested  in  the  record.  But  the  floor 
of  the  valley  was  safely  reached  at  last,  by  careful 
driving  under  compression,  and  we  emerged  in  a 
region  rich  in  cultivated  greenery  and  in  striking  con- 
trast with  the  stern  bareness  of  the  summit  and  with 
the  lean  pasturage  of  the  descent. 

It  was  late.  It  was  even  late  for  a  land  of  long- 
lingering  twilight,  and  the  dark  was  rapidly  gather- 
ing about  us  in  the  valley,  and  therefore  we  were 
on  the  lookout  for  an  attractive  inn,  but  we  passed 
at  least  one  which  did  not  measure  up  externally  to 
our  ideas  of  a  stopping-place  romantic  enough  for 
such  a  region.  And  that  is  a  great  advantage  of  be- 
ing in  a  motor  car;  it  so  annihilates  distance  that  you 
feel  supremely  independent  as  to  going  on  to  where 
it  pleases  you  to  stop.  And  we  finally  came  to  such 
a  place,  a  tiny  wayside  and  waterside  inn  of  charm. 
But  our  apparent  necessity  was  strong;  the  cold,  the 
closing  in  of  darkness,  a  sparsely-settled  and  still 
more  sparsely-inned  region  in  our  front — and  so  the 
highest  London  prices  were  promptly  quoted  us,  for 
that  little,  simple  country  inn  and  its  simple  accom- 
modation. It  reminded  us  of  a  sign  approaching 
a  popular  resort,  at  home,  announcing  that  no 
advantage  would  be  taken  of  motorists  more  than  of 
other  guests! 

Without  replying,  we  started  on  and  left  the  man 


THROUGH  SHREWSBURY 55^ 

in  his  doorway  gazing  after  us  with  open  mouth.  And 
if,  after  a  run  of  miles  down  the  valley,  past  now 
and  then  some  old  yew-shaded  church  with  gleaming 
gravestones,  but  seldom  seeing  anywhere  a  sign  of 
life,  we  had  not  chanced  upon  an  inn,  we  might  have 
regretted  scorning  the  hospitality  of  the  man  who  had 
tried  to  take  advantage  of  our  need,  for  it  was  after 
nine  o'clock  when  we  ran  into  the  quiet  street  of  little 
Cemmaes  and  to  our  disappointment  saw  not  a  sign 
of  an  inn — ^literally  not  a  sign. 

But  at  the  end  of  a  length  of  garden  wall  was  a 
house  built  at  the  very  sidewalk  edge,  whose  doorway 
was  covered  by  a  little  stone  shelter  projecting  out- 
ward. There  was  a  light  inside,  and  the  door  stood 
open.  It  had  a  homey,  pleasant  look  as  we  passed  it 
in  the  deepening  dusk  and,  as  we  now  saw  we  were 
at  the  end  of  the  village,  it  occurred  to  us  that  it 
might  really  be  an  inn,  in  spite  of  its  showing  no 
sign. 

One  of  us  went  back  and  found  that  it  really  was. 
And,  although  this  was  only  our  fourth  night  out, 
and  very  many  inns,  large  and  small  and  most  of  them 
extremely  pleasant,  were  to  follow,  the  great  number 
of  pleasant  inn  experiences  has  not  clouded  the  mem- 
ory of  that  inn  at  Cemmaes. 

As  we  went  in  we  all  felt  the  sense  of  relief  that 
comes  to  any  belated  traveler  on  finding  shelter. 
There  was  an  excellent  locked  garage ;  a  fire  flickered 
up  in  the  grate  of  the  sitting-room;  the  bedrooms  were 
fresh  and  cozy,  with  high-piled  beds  that  promised 
restful  slumber;  there  was  hot  water  brought  us  in 
shining  brass  pots. 

Naturally,  no  meal  was  ready  at  the  moment,  but 
we  were  told  it  would  be  ready  soon,  and  it  was. 
There  was  a  picturesque  little  bar  fronted  with  bowed 
glass  in  tiny  panes,  and  the  bar  looked  so  small  that 
we  measured  it  and  found  it  only  five  feet  by  five. 


56 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

and  it  was  pleasant  to  look  upon,  with  its  shin- 
ing glasses  and  brasses  and  its  tankards  of  pewter. 
And  there  was  a  stone-paved  taproom  with  a  fireplace 
and  a  great  semicircular  settle  of  oak,  old,  high- 
backed,  paneled  and  wax-polished. 

On  the  stairs  ticked  an  old-time  grandfather's 
clock;  and  the  late  supper  was  in  a  low-set  room, 
entered  by  a  doorway  behind  the  tall  taproom  settle ; 
a  cozy  room,  which  we  found,  in  the  morning  at  break- 
fast, opened  out  with  glass  doors  into  an  adorable 
walled  garden. 

The  cooking  was  simple  and  excellent;  the  little 
maid  was  neat  and  brisk  and  cheerful.  The  coffee 
was  good — an  unexpected  touch,  this  last — and  the 
name  of  the  landlady  was  a  delight,  for  it  was  Pru- 
dence Jones!  And  she  was  all  that  the  possessor  of 
such  a  name  ought  to  be. 

It  interested  us,  in  talking  with  some  Cemmaes 
people,  to  learn  that  the  region  through  which  we 
had  just  passed  was  at  one  time  so  infested  with  red- 
haired  robbers  that  the  quiet  people  of  Cemmaes  used 
to  build  scythes  in  their  chimneys  to  prevent  the  rob- 
bers from  coming  down  in  the  night.  Whereupon  we 
pleased  ourselves  vastly  by  thinking  that  we  remem- 
bered that  a  certain  disappointed  man  had  red  hair. 

We  may  as  well  confess  that  we  did  not  know  until 
next  morning  where  we  were.  We  heard  the  name  of 
the  village,  but  the  Welsh  have  a  habit  of  not  pro- 
nouncing as  well  as  they  spell!  They  spell  elabo- 
rately and  beautifully!  And  in  the  morning  we 
copied  the  name  from  the  postoffice  sign — Cemmaes 
— and  reconciled  it  to  the  pronunciation,  which  was 
remindful  of  an  apothecary's  shop! 

Shortly  after  we  left,  the  next  morning,  a  light 
drizzling  of  rain  came  on,  but  it  is  not  entirely  a  joke 
to  say  that  an  ordinary  rain  is  not  so  wet  in  England 
as  it  is  in  America,  for  there  really  is  no  other  way 


THROUGH  SHREWSBURY 57 

to  express  it;  and  women  were  scrubbing  the  stone 
walks  in  front  of  their  cottages  in  the  rain,  stone  cot- 
tages that  solitarily  dotted  the  roadside,  cottages 
casement-windowed,  and  of  a  wonderful  whiteness 
that  contrasted  markedly  with  the  deep  green  of  the 
fields  in  which  they  were  set.  We  were  on  the  point 
of  stopping  to  put  up  the  top  of  the  car  when  the 
drizzle  ceased,  and  we  went  on  over  a  low,  bleak  pass 
and  emerged  upon  a  great  and  hill-encircled  plain, 
and  came  to  Newtown,  a  little  manufacturing  place 
for  fine  flannel,  really  new  about  a  hundred  years 
ago. 

Shortly  beyond  Newtown  is  the  Severn  River,  a 
gentle  stream  flowing  through  a  broad  and  pleasant 
valley  with  hills  rising  in  slow  slopes;  and  the  road 
of  tar-macadam,  level  as  a  board  and  literally  swept 
with  brooms,  even  far  out  in  the  country,  led  for  miles 
between  low  hedges  of  blooming  hawthorn  and  wild 
roses  and  beside  great  fields  yellow  with  buttercups 
and  with  fine  clumps  of  trees. 

Welshpool  was  the  next  town,  a  busy,  pleasant 
place,  and  leading  right  off  the  busy  main  street  we 
found  a  lane  leading  into  the  park  of  Powis  Castle. 
It  was  all  so  simple ;  there  was  not  even  a  lodge,  but 
an  old  man  ran  to  open  the  gate  of  the  park.  We 
had  been  told  by  a  pohceman,  always  the  reliable  dis- 
penser of  local  facts,  that  the  park  was  freely  open 
to  the  public  even  with  motor  cars. 

It  was  a  wonderful  ride  of  a  mile  from  the  busy 
town  street  to  the  old  Powis  Castle.  We  passed  a 
pool  filled  with  pond  lilies,  and  ponds  with  curious 
waterfowl;  there  were  thrushes  singing  joyously,  and 
mighty  oak  trees,  and  charming  glades  where  scores 
of  exquisite  deer,  with  their  horns  in  the  velvet  stage, 
were  lying  down  or  wandering  about.  It  was  so  mar- 
velous, all  this,  so  sweetly  sylvan  so  near  a  busy  town, 
and  it  was  clear  that  motor  cars  were  not  common 


58 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

there,  for  the  deer  hardly  noticed  our  presence;  but 
we  did,  indeed,  go  through  the  park  very  slowly  and 
quietly,  appreciating  the  absolute  peace  and  beauty 
of  it  all. 

We  came  in  front  of  the  great  red  stone  castle — 
a  castle  stately  and  fine,  dating  back  for  a  satisfac- 
tory number  of  centuries,  still  lived  in,  richly  kept  up 
and  with  marvelous  terraced  gardens  round  about, 
terraced  gardens  dropping  away  from  the  castle-knoll 
in  line  after  line  of  beauty. 

There  were  stately  peacocks,  there  were  trees  trim- 
clipped  into  cones  with  geometrical  care,  there  were 
masses  of  yew  and  there  were  wonderful  areas  of 
bright-green  box  with  tops  trimmed  actually  to  the 
smoothness  of  a  lawn ;  and  one  great  triangle  in  par- 
ticular, one  hundred  feet  long  on  each  of  its  sides, 
was  a  solid  mass  of  turf -smooth  box,  kept  clipped  by 
men  on  boards. 

Beyond  Welshpool  the  Severn  Valley  broadens 
and  we  pass  the  border  line  back  into  England  and 
are  in  Shropshire.  A  striking  mountain  that  has 
been  seen  for  miles  takes  possession  of  the  landscape 
and  dominates  it.  We  reached  the  mountain  and 
rounded  its  point  and  glided  by  its  base  and  were  out 
into  a  great  plain  and  on  toward  Shrewsbury.  Above 
the  plain  arose  a  low-lying  hill  and  it  was  topped  with 
trees,  and  above  the  trees  arose  a  tall  and  narrow 
spire  which  marked  the  city. 

We  approached  Shrewsbury  through  a  rich  and 
lovely  land,  passing  many  an  estate  of  richness;  and 
there  are  so  very,  very  many  in  England!  Now  and 
then  we  passed  a  little  cottage  with  thatched  roof 
weathered  by  age,  and  there  were  thick-wheeled 
wagons  on  the  country  road,  and  soon  we  were  run- 
ning up  Shrewsbury  hill,  bending  our  way  past  old 
houses  whose  projecting  stories  doddered  over  the 
street;    old,    old    half-timbered    houses,    with    their 


THROUGH  SHREWSBURY 59 

ancient  fronting  beams  vividly  black  and  white  in 
lozenges,  crosses  and  squares.  In  Shrewsbury,  no- 
table as  it  is  with  such  old  houses,  one  readily  sees 
why  the  English  term  that  ancient  style  of  architec- 
ture "  black  and  white." 

We  went  by  the  stately  old  castle,  now  become 
shabby  and  out  of  place  through  its  railway-station 
surroundings,  and  we  stopped  for  a  little  at  the  busi- 
est corner,  for  there  once  stood  the  high  cross  of  the 
city,  at  which  spot  the  dead  body  of  the  famous 
Hotspur,  Harry  Percy,  after  he  was  killed  at  the 
Battle  of  Shrewsbury,  was  exposed  to  the  public  view 
between  two  millstones  to  show  that  both  the  insur- 
rection and  its  leader  were  crushed.  It  was  here,  too, 
at  this  now  extremely  thronged  and  busy  corner  that 
the  last  Welsh  Prince  of  Wales  was  beheaded  after 
being  captured  and  it  was  this  particular  happening 
in  Shrewsbury  that  gave  a  chance  for  Edward's  jest 
about  the  new  Prince  of  Wales  who  could  speak  not 
a  word  of  English.  Perhaps  in  those  days  millstones 
themselves  were  a  sort  of  jest,  too. 

Near  this  spot  is  a  particularly  interesting  row  of 
the  old  black-and-white  buildings;  Butchers'  Row, 
it  is  called,  but  without  any  reference  to  such  little 
incidents  of  feudal  life  as  have  just  been  mentioned. 

We  all  of  us  wanted  to  taste  the  Shrewsbury  cakes, 
such  being  the  influence  of  reputation,  but  like  many 
another  reputation  we  found  it  ill-deserved,  for  the 
present-day  cakes  are  only  common,  white,  sugar 
cookies,  too  sweet,  large-sized  and  not  good.  If  they 
did  not  bear  the  magic  name  of  Shrewsbury  cakes, 
they  would  sell,  like  other  little  cakes  in  England, 
at  six  for  threepence,  but  as  it  is  they  sell  at  six  for 
a  shilling,  sealed  in  a  round  pasteboard  box. 

Shrewsbury,  although  at  the  very  edge  of  Wales, 
is  not  popular  with  the  Welsh,  who  hold  a  grudge 
against  it,  but  not  because  of  the  Shrewsbury  ending 


60 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

of  the  last  Welsh  Prince  of  Wales,  for  that  was  long 
ago  forgotten.  It  seems  that  Shrewsbury  long  since 
became  an  active  center  for  Welsh  trade  and  that  it 
was  a  favorite  place  for  the  marketing  of  Welsh  flan- 
nel, which  was  all  measured  by  the  buyers  at  the  old 
market  house,  still  standing,  of  Elizabethan  days, 
around  a  drum  just  one  yard  in  circumference,  so 
that  each  revolution  was  exactly  a  yard;  and  it  was 
long  before  the  Welsh  discovered  that,  although  the 
first  revolution  was  a  yard,  each  succeeding  revolu- 
tion was  more  than  a  yard  and  so  on  increasingly; 
and  they  were  so  angry  when  they  came  to  realize 
this  that  they  drew  away  their  flannel  trade  and  their 
friendship ! 

There  are  excellent  old  churches  in  Shrewsbury, 
but  one  most  notices  the  one  whose  tall  spire  is  such 
a  landmark,  St.  Mary's,  with  its  exquisite  window 
over  the  altar.  There  is  an  Edward  the  Sixth  gram- 
mar school  in  the  city,  and  wherever  there  is  an  Ed- 
ward the  Sixth  grammar  school  one  expects  to  find 
English  celebrities  connected  with  it,  and  here  both 
Darwin  and  Sir  Philip  Sidney  were  pupils,  and  the 
reflection  comes  that  Sidney,  in  that  bit  of  dying 
courtesy  on  the  battlefield,  was  of  more  good  to  the 
world  in  his  example  of  unselfishness  than  was  Dar- 
win with  all  his  wisdom.  It  is  odd,  too,  that  Judge 
Jeffreys  was  educated  here ;  clearly,  schools  know  no 
distinction  between  the  famous  and  the  infamous. 

We  spent  in  the  city  more  than  Falstaff's  "  hour 
by  Shrewsbury  clock,"  for  we  lunched  there  at  an 
esthetic  little  restaurant  overlooking  the  river,  which 
made  specialties  of  "  chips  and  peas "  and  "  fish 
snacks  " ;  and  they  cut  our  salmon  from  a  lordly 
fish. 

We  entered  the  city  over  a  bridge  and  we  went  out 
over  another  bridge,  for  the  Severn  almost  encircles 
Shrewsbury ;  and  we  noticed  as  we  motored  away  that 


THROUGH  SHREWSBURY 61 

this  city,  with  so  much  of  the  medieval,  has  even 
medieval  debris,  for  we  passed  by  an  ancient  stone 
pulpit,  of  admirable  design  and  workmanship  as  well 
as  of  great  age,  that  stands  out,  bare  and  abandoned, 
in  its  original  position,  although  the  church  of  which 
it  was  part  has  long  since  absolutely  disappeared  and 
left  it  there,  and  a  coal  yard  occupies  the  churchly 
site  and  surrounds  the  pulpit  with  heaps  of  coal ! 


CHAPTER  VII 

THE   WAY   TO   WORCESTER 

WE  crossed  the  Severn  on  a  beautiful  stone 
bridge,  a  bow-curved  bridge  of  seven  arches, 
and  we  went  on  into  a  charming  region,  and 
there  were  rabbits  hopping  across  the  fields  and 
pheasants  flitting  and  hunters  or  gamekeepers  with 
their  guns  and  there  were  cattle  wading  in  the  streams 
and  there  was  a  succession  of  wide  and  beautiful  views 
over  an  idyllic  countryside. 

The  Severn  coquettishly  continued  with  us,  now 
tantalizing  from  a  distance  and  now  coming  coyly  up, 
and  suddenly  there  was  an  enchanting  surprise,  for 
on  the  other  side  of  the  stream  there  appeared  a  beau- 
tiful ruin;  the  ruin  of  an  ancient  abbey  almost  hid- 
den among  vines  and  trees,  and  what  we  could  see 
was  a  long  row  of  low-pillared  arches  and  a  fragmen- 
tary square  tower.  We  stopped  the  car,  and  looked 
across  the  river  with  a  great  deal  of  joy.  There  was 
no  bridge,  but  we  did  not  wish  for  a  bridge;  although 
there  are  times  when  one  wishes  to  wander  through 
every  part  of  a  ruin,  there  are  other  times  when  there 
is  sheer  delight  in  a  provocative  vision.  That  abbey 
ruin,  shyly  hiding  among  glorious  elms  beside  the 
copious  river,  was  a  delight. 

It  was  a  region  of  ancient  farmhouses  and  of  cot- 
tages with  roofs  so  oddly  thatched,  in  curves  over  the 
second-story  windows,  as  to  look  precisely  like  eye- 
brows over  eyes;  and  there  were  roses  trained  on 
the  cottage  fronts  thick  with  blossoms  of  pale  yellow 
and  blushing  pink;  and  many  humble  cottages  had 


THE  WAY  TO  WORCESTER 63 

trees  trimmed  intricately,  a  favorite  diversion  of  the 
countryside  being  to  take  a  cone-shaped  yew  and 
trim  it  into  alternate  layers  of  slice  and  space  till  it 
looks  like  a  series  of  great  disks  threaded  on  the  trunk ; 
and  sets  of  trees  so  trimmed  are  frequently  seen  in 
cottage  dooryards.  And  then  we  came  into  a  manu- 
facturing district  and  there  was  a  queer-looking  iron 
bridge,  high  in  the  middle,  stretching  across  the  val- 
ley; and  the  town  beside  the  bridge  we  found  to  be 
named  Iron  Bridge,  in  the  bridge's  honor,  because 
this  was  the  first  successful  bridge  of  iron  ever  built. 
And  it  seemed  typical  of  England  that  it  should  re- 
main there,  still  standing  and  still  used  after  these 
many  years,  and  it  will  probably  still  be  standing  and 
used  after  many  another  year,  for  it  has  obtained  a 
sort  of  prescriptive  right  to  existence.  In  some  other 
parts  of  the  world  it  would  long  ago  have  been  re- 
placed by  a  newer  and  better  bridge,  but  perhaps 
there  is  a  great  deal  of  good  sense,  after  all,  in  the 
saving  of  needless  expense. 

There  is  much  of  hilly  country  hereabouts,  making 
long  and  steady  climbs,  and  we  began  to  realize,  much 
to  our  astonishment,  that  England  is  not  a  level  coun- 
try, but  a  hilly  country.  We  expected  Wales  to  be 
hilly,  but  not  such  parts  of  England  as  this.  The 
grades,  although  not  difficult,  were  frequently  quite 
long  enough  for  a  mountainous  country. 

And  we  noticed,  here  in  this  manufacturing  dis- 
trict, that  the  towns  are  close-packed  and  that  the 
houses  of  the  working  folk  cling  to  steep  banks  like 
birds'-nests  huddled  close  and  tight;  and  that  on  the 
level  ground  round  about,  and  right  up  to  the  tight- 
huddled  houses,  were  the  smiling  estates  of  the 
wealthy;  one  does  not  see  natural  development,  in  a 
healthful,  long  stretching-off  from  towns  in  lines  of 
suburban  cottages  and  gardens. 

It  is  a  region  of  mines  and  porcelain-makers  here- 


64 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

abouts ;  and  we  are  still  in  Shropshire — still  in  Salop, 
as  the  people  absurdly  call  it,  although  why  they  call 
it  Salop  they  do  not  know;  in  fact,  they  seem  never 
to  have  thought  of  it ;  their  parents  and  grandparents 
called  Shropshire  Salop  and  so  Salop  it  is.  And  to 
find  porcelain-makers  here  is  remindful  of  porcelain 
collectors  at  home  who,  when  shown  some  piece  not 
marked  and  not  clearly  assignable  as  to  class,  look 
wise ,  and  say,  delighting  in  the  mystifying  name : 
"  Oh!  it  is  probably  Salopian! " 

We  entered  again  into  a  fine  rural  region,  for  the 
system  that  keeps  people  in  the  towns  does  at  least 
keep  the  country  beautiful.  And,  although  we  knew 
we  were  now  approaching  another  town  of  consider- 
able size,  with  mills  and  slag  and  mine  refuse  like 
those  of  Iron  Bridge  and  vicinity,  it  was  as  if  they 
had  never  existed,  for  we  were  in  the  midst  of  sweet 
loveliness,  and  the  road  swept  by  a  bordering  of  red- 
rock  cliff,  and  over  our  heads  great  beeches  arched, 
and  then  we  were  in  Bridgnorth. 

If  we  were  to  describe  Bridgnorth  in  proper  order, 
we  ought  to  begin  with  the  date  of  its  founding  and 
then  go  on  in  regular  sequence ;  but  we  begin  with  the 
fact  that  at  eleven  o'clock  in  our  inn,  the  closing  hour, 
two  cats  and  two  dogs  came  up  and  began  to  wander 
about  the  corridors  and  stairways  with  all  the  solem- 
nity of  a  medieval  watch.  And  we  next  come  to  the 
"  boots,"  for  "  boots  "  was  a  joy!  in  waistcoat  of  bril- 
liant yellow-and-black  such  as  Sam  Weller  himself 
might  have  worn. 

Having  mentioned  the  dogs  and  the  cats  and  the 
"  boots,"  we  may  now  add  that  the  inn  had  attractive 
features,  such  as  ancient  beamed  ceihngs  and  an 
oriel  window  and  a  window-seat  in  the  dining-room 
which  makes  anyone  who  sees  it  wish  to  go  home  and 
build  one  like  it. 

Bridgnorth  is  one  of  the  overlooked  towns  of  Eng- 


THE  WAY  TO  WORCESTER 65^ 

land.  And  as  a  matter  of  fact  there  are  a  high  town 
and  a  low  town,  and  one  precisely  overlooks  the  other 
so  delightfully  that  Charles  the  First  remarked,  of 
the  walk  along  the  upper  edge,  that  it  was  the  finest 
walk  in  the  Kingdom;  and  even  if  he  never  said  pre- 
cisely that,  or  if  he  said  it  only  as  a  pleasant  bit  of 
flattery,  a  walk  which  gives  rise  to  such  a  story  must 
needs  be  remarkable ;  and  it  is. 

The  high  town  and  low  town  are  divided  by  a  river 
and  a  bridge,  and  the  low  town  is  the  place,  for  very 
practical  reasons,  for  motorists  to  stop,  for  the  easiest 
way  to  see  the  high  town  is  to  leave  your  motor  car 
below  and  go  up  yourself  by  an  inclined  road  which 
is  run  by  the  simple  principle  of  the  weight  of  one  car 
balancing  the  other.  And  to  the  query,  "  When  does 
it  go?  "  the  answer  is,  such  being  the  delightful  oblig- 
ingness of  the  people,  "  Whenever  you  are  ready." — 
And  the  round  trip  costs,  for  one  person,  just  a  penny 
and  a  half! 

Many  of  the  streets  are  mere  narrow  stone  walks 
or  stairways,  and  everywhere  there  is  an  exquisite 
cleanliness,  and  there  are  numerous  old  houses,  in- 
cluding the  house  in  which  lived  good  old  Percy  of 
Percy's  "  Reliques." — And  somehow  it  pleases  us  to 
see  such  a  sign  as  "  Horse  Repository  "  and  the  de- 
lightful incongruity  of  "  Fish,  Fruit  and  Rabbits." 

As  Bridgnorth  cannot  boast  an  Edward  the  Sixth 
grammar  school,  it  triumphantly  boasts  of  one  ante- 
dating the  time  of  the  Sixth  Edward.  And  this  city 
thinks  quite  as  much  of  its  mayoresses,  as  it  calls 
them,  as  it  does  of  its  mayors ;  and  if  you  are  shown 
the  town  regalia — and  they  love  to  show  it ! — there  is 
not  only,  as  part  of  it,  a  mayor's  chain  with  the  names 
of  successional  mayors  engraved  upon  it,  but  also 
the  mayoresses'  chain,  with  the  names  of  successional 
mayoresses.  All  of  which  adds  to  the  gayety  of 
Salop.    And  it  is  delightful  too  to  find  that  the  maces 


66 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

of  the  regalia  are,  for  civic  banquets,  transformed  into 
loving  cups,  and  that  the  ancient  building  of  Eliza- 
bethan days,  in  the  center  of  the  main  street  of  the 
upper  town,  was  originally  a  barn,  moved  there  two 
and  a  half  centuries  ago  and  transformed  into  a  town- 
hall.    Clearly,  a  clever  folk  these,  and  adaptable. 

And  the  superb  walk  of  Charles  the  First  leads  be- 
side all  that  is  left  of  the  ancient  castle;  a  castle  of 
almost  the  time  of  William  the  Conqueror;  once  a 
tremendous  old  place,  but  with  nothing  now  left  but 
a  huge  fragment,  fascinating  in  its  tippable  interest, 
for  in  the  matter  of  leaning  it  out-Pisas  Pisa. 

But  the  motorist  leaves  a  new-discovered  old  city 
behind  just  as  he  leaves  everything  else  behind;  for- 
ever the  call  is  onward;  and  we  pass  road  traction- 
engines  hauling  merchandise  from  town  to  town,  their 
ambition  seeming  to  be  to  haul  bigger  loads  than  do 
the  tiny  little  boxes  on  wheels  that  are  the  railroad 
freight  cars  of  England.  Always,  in  England,  a 
railroad  freight  train  looks  like  something  from  a 
Swiss  toy-shop.  So  great  a  feature  are  the  traction 
freight  caravans  on  the  highroads  of  England  that 
every  bridge  is  marked  with  the  number  of  tons  that 
may  be  handled  in  one  transit. 

And  we  find  steam  rollers  for  road  repair  frequent, 
as  everywhere  thus  far,  with  road  repair  material  left 
in  large  piles  by  the  roadside  for  laborers  to  hammer 
by  hand  into  fragments,  and  frequently  there  is  the 
man  himself,  astride  the  pile,  hammering.  It  is  pos- 
sible that  there  are  steam-crushers  in  England,  but 
labor  is  cheap,  and  this  fact  fosters  the  belief  that 
hand-broken  stone  lasts  better  than  machine  broken. 

Past  ivy-covered  mansions,  past  Tudor  chimneys, 
past  moss-roofed  cottages,  past  peacocks  clipped  from 
yew  with  great  spread  of  tail  and  paired  across  gate- 
ways!— maybe  these  were  gardeners'  homes  or  those 
of  professional  hedge-cutters,  but  the  peacocks  were 


THE  WAY  TO  WORCESTER  67 

superbly  ornamental — and  we  pass  a  wayside  inn 
with  the  diverting  sign,  as  if  in  defiance  of  proverbial 
philosophy,  of  "  Beer  and  Skittles." 

Then  we  spin  easily  into  prosperous  Kidderminster 
with  almost  an  unformed  expectation  of  seeing  car- 
pets on  either  side;  and,  practical  city  that  it  is,  it 
has  a  very-practically-put-up  monument  to  the  origi- 
nator of  the  Penny  Post;  and,  more  unexpectedly, 
the  author  of  Baxter's  "  Saints'  Rest "  stands  in  full 
robes  of  white  marble,  blessing  the  traffic  in  a  curved 
place  delightfully  named  the  Bull  Ring;  but  Kidder- 
minster, though  it  may  be  saintly,  is  far  from  being 
a  saints'  rest,  with  its  busy  streets  crowded  with  huge 
drays  laden  with  linen  warp  and  wool  sacks,  and 
thickly  thronged  not  only  with  vehicles  but  peo- 
ple. A  market-woman  at  one  end  of  the  seat  of  a 
high-perched,  two-wheeled  cart,  her  husband  at  the 
other  and  three  children  in  between,  farm  wagons 
piled  high  with  wicker  baskets  or  alive  with  lively 
chickens  held  in  by  the  excellent  expedient  of  rope 
nets — and  suddenly  we  saw  a  small  lump  of  coal  drop 
from  a  coal  cart,  whereupon  a  little,  old  woman,  im- 
maculately neat  and  decently  and  cleanly  dressed, 
darted  out  into  the  midst  of  the  busy  traffic ;  it  was  a 
miracle  she  was  not  run  over;  seized  the  coal,  which 
was  so  little  that  she  picked  up  all  its  four  fragments 
in  one  hand,  dropped  them  into  her  little  shopping 
satchel  and  went  quickly  back  to  the  sidewalk.  Eng- 
land has  certainly  learned  frugality. 

A  compact  town  is  Kidderminster,  like  practically 
every  other  town  in  Great  Britain,  with  extension 
into  the  country  so  grudgingly  barred  by  the  land- 
owners that  almost  with  phantasmagoric  swiftness  we 
were  past  some  great  factories  and  across  the  river 
Stour  and  were  in  an  enchanting  country  of  great, 
green  regions,  with  seldom  a  house,  with  few  people, 
with  the  impression  of  almost  a  deserted  land,  but 


68 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

beautifully  hedged  and  splendidly  roaded  and  with 
miles  and  miles  of  grazing  country  or  private  parks. 

Seldom  are  farmers  seen  cultivating  a  field ;  in  this 
the  general  English  countryside  being  very  different 
not  only  from  that  of  America,  but  that  of  conti- 
nental Europe.  The  plowing,  when  you  do  see  it,  is 
likely  to  be  uneconomically  done  with  three  horses 
abreast,  but  the  same  farmer,  if  you  meet  him  hauling 
a  load  to  town,  is  behind  two  horses  tandem,  and  the 
wagon  itself  is  a  tremendous  weight  to  pull  even  when 
unloaded,  the  English  not  having  yet  found  out  that 
lightness  may  be  strength. 

It  is  a  great  grazing  country  hereabouts,  and  the 
beef  and  pork  and  mutton  of  the  countryside  travel 
to  town  on  foot,  drovers'  time  being  cheaper  than  rail- 
road charges.  A  constant  feature  of  motoring  in 
England  is  the  passing  of  market-driven  animals  on 
the  road. 

And  old  men  sweeping  the  country  roads  and  men 
with  short-handled  sickles  cutting  the  grass  along  the 
wayside  are  familiar  sights — and  we  haven't  yet  seen 
a  single  scythe. 

We  pass  into  Worcestershire  and  are  in  a  region 
more  attractive  and  more  parklike  than  before;  not 
that  we  knew  precisely  when  we  left  one  shire  for  the 
other,  because  few  maps  show  a  shire  or  county  line, 
and  few  of  the  English  themselves  know  much  about 
them,  but  we  knew  that  we  had  been  in  Shropshire 
and  that  after  a  while  we  were  in  Worcestershire  and 
we  knew  just  about  where  the  division  line  lay. 

That  some  of  the  county  names  end  in  "  shire,"  and 
some  do  not,  is  because  some  of  the  counties,  such  as 
Essex  and  Kent,  still  mark  the  limits  of  ancient  king- 
doms, whereas  others  have  been  "  shired  "  or  sheared 
off;  Worcestershire,  for  example,  was  shired  from 
ancient  Mercia.  And  another  interesting  thing  about 
counties  is  that,  as  the  word  came  from  France,  the 


THE  WAY  TO  WORCESTER 69 

title  of  "  count  "  meant  naturally  the  ruler  of  a  county 
in  early  times,  but  that  England  positively  would  not 
permanently  adopt  "  count,"  although  willing  to  re- 
tain "  county,"  and  still  holds  the  ruler  of  a  county 
to  be  an  earl ;  but  that  the  wives  of  the  earls,  probably 
from  feminine  love  for  things  French,  hold  to  the 
title  "  countess  " — all  of  which  seems  delightfully  in- 
consistent for  a  people  who  above  all  things  pride 
themselves  on  consistency. 

Worcestershire  is  a  sweet  and  smiling  county ;  there 
are  great  levels  and  rich  farms,  and  magnificent  es- 
tates and  hedges,  and  great  homes  and  thatched  cot- 
tages, and  geraniums  thick  in  the  windows,  and 
mighty  orchards  with  the  trees  whitewashed  up  to 
their  very  branches;  one  remembers  that  the  Crom- 
wellian  soldiers  from  London  wrote  home  with  aston- 
ishment about  the  fruit  trees  full  of  fruit,  even  over- 
hanging the  roads.  And  one  sees  an  astonishing 
number  of  elms ;  indeed,  the  elm  is  so  common  as  to  be 
called  the  weed  of  Worcestershire;  but  it  is  not  the 
graceful  wineglass  elm  of  America,  but  the  stocky, 
good-looking  English  elm  with  which  we  are  familiar 
on  Boston  Common. 

Worcestershire  seems  to  be  dominated  by  a  delight- 
ful green,  for  it  is  all  of  a  peculiar  delicate  green 
loveliness;  it  is  thus  we  remember  that  softly  beau- 
tiful region,  with  its  green  hedging,  its  church  spires 
reaching  through  the  thick  massed  green  of  trees,  its 
old  cottages  with  green  shrubs  all  about,  its  clipped 
green  peacocks  looking  at  us  across  entrance-gates 
and  its  great  green  fields  in  softly  sweeping  undula- 
tions. But  not  everything  is  green,  for  there  are 
often,  in  cottage  gardens,  tree  roses  and  Oriental  pop- 
pies fit  for  palaces. 

There  are  little  villages,  such  as  Ormsley,  with  the 
general  impression  of  nothing  but  ancient  black-and- 
white  half-timbered  houses;  and  some  of  the  houses 


70 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

are  not  timbered  but  only  of  brick,  but  the  brick  has 
been  whitened  and  black  bars  and  braces  have  been 
painted  on,  to  give  the  appearance  of  timber. 

On  the  country  road  you  meet  women  driving  high- 
set  market  carts,  and  you  meet  an  astonishing  num- 
ber of  well-dressed  girls,  in  green  jerseys,  pegging 
along,  cane  in  hand,  enjoying  the  national  exercise. 
The  sleek  cats  are  a  feature  of  Worcestershire  vil- 
lages, and  are  everywhere  drowsing  in  doorways  or 
on  window-sills,  unless  they  are  hazardously  crossing 
the  road  immediately  in  front  of  your  motor  car. 

And  it  may  be  remarked  that  the  county  is  not 
named  after  the  sauce ! — and  that,  incredible  as  it  may 
seem,  we  saw  quite  as  much  of  an  American  brand  of 
Worcestershire  sauce  in  Worcestershire  as  we  did  of 
the  English  brand  in  Worcestershire.  But  there  is  a 
section  of  the  city  of  Worcester  that  is  quite  redolent 
of  the  pungent  spicy  smell. 

We  reached  the  city  of  Worcester  and  motored 
through  its  streets  with  the  restful  impression  that, 
although  it  was  busy,  it  was  not  too  hurriedly  busy; 
it  somehow  gave  an  impression  of  being  busy,  in  an 
old-fashioned  way,  with  affairs  of  importance;  and, 
after  all,  through  its  world-famous  establishments  for 
making  sauce,  gloves  and  porcelain,  it  maintains  a 
prominent  position. 

It  was  Saturday  morning,  and  so  we  motored  first 
to  the  famous  porcelain  factory,  for  the  motor  trav- 
eler, with  his  limited  time  for  each  place,  must  learn 
to  watch  for  the  closing  of  Saturday  afternoon  and 
Sunday  and  even  of  those  mysterious  English  orgies 
known  as  bank  holidays,  and  must  try  so  to  manage 
his  schedule  as  not  to  let  these  times  make  him  miss 
things  of  importance. 

We  were  told  that  we  could  have  a  special  guide 
through  the  factory  in  an  hour  or  so,  whereupon  we 
went  to  the  cathedral,  a  noble  structure,  huge  and  no- 


THE  WAY  TO  WORCESTER 71 

tably  beautiful,  the  finest  cathedral  thus  far  on  our 
journey,  a  cathedral  with  a  fine  exterior  and  with  an 
interior  that  is  really  imposing  and  grand,  with 
mighty  pillars  and  a  superb  length  of  vista. 

There  was  scarcely  a  particle  of  old  glass  or  brass 
left  by  the  Reformation  in  this  cathedral,  for,  in  the 
old  days,  to  reform  meant  too  often  to  destroy;  one 
really  wonders  why,  when  they  destroyed  so  much, 
they  left  standing  the  great  religious  buildings  them- 
selves. 

Even  worse  than  breaking  the  glass  and  tearing 
away  the  brass  was  the  plastering  and  whitewashing 
of  the  great  interior  of  this  cathedral ;  except  that  this 
pernicious  white  could  be  cleaned  off,  and  it  has  been. 
But  what  an  enormous  work  it  was,  putting  it  all  on ! 
And  the  most  curious  thing  is  that  anyone  should  go 
to  such  trouble  to  plaster  and  whitewash.  And,  al- 
though extensive  cleaning  off  has  been  done,  the  ef- 
fects of  the  pernicious  white  are  still  in  some  places 
to  be  seen. 

It  interested  us,  among  the  monuments  of  this 
cathedral,  to  find  one  which  proudly  boasted,  of  an 
entire  family  of  the  early  1600's,  that  they  were 
"  Here  bom,  here  bred,  here  buried  ";  a  typically  in- 
sular boast,  this,  of  the  English  before  their  days  of 
empire-building. 

On  the  whole,  much  though  we  admired  the  cathe- 
dral, we  got  a  very  great  proportion  of  our  pleasure 
from  the  verger  who  showed  us  about,  he  being  a  very 
jewel  of  a  guide.  He  was  never  weary  of  describing, 
and  was  disappointed  if  we  did  not  wish  to  see  every- 
thing— and  he  w^as  such  a  conscientious  man!  He 
showed  an  effigy,  in  gilded  stone,  of  King  John,  the 
oldest  royal  effigy  remaining  in  Great  Britain  and  in 
marvelously  perfect  condition  through  having  been 
long  out  of  sight ;  in  fact,  it  required  an  act  of  Parlia- 
ment to  have  it  brought  out  to  its  present  place;  and 


72 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

it  being  so  fresh  looking,  the  verger  was  asked  if  the 
effigy  was  made  at  the  time  of  King  John's  death. 

"Oh!  quite  so; — or,  no — let  me  see — ^no,  sir," — a 
distinct  note  of  disappointment  in  his  voice :  "  King 
John  died  in  1214,  sir,  and  this  effigy  was  not  made 
until  1216." 

The  effigy  shows  the  king  with  his  nose  a  little 
rubbed  and  with  a  queer  beast,  in  stone,  at  his  feet 
that  is  neither  lion  nor  griffin  nor  armadillo,  but  a 
little  like  each,  and  it  holds  the  tip  of  John's  sword 
in  its  mouth. 

The  verger  spoke  so  frequently  of  the  condition  of 
various  parts  of  the  cathedral  "  before  the  fire  "  that 
we  asked  solicitously  after  a  while,  "  When  was  this 
fire? "  only  to  find  that  he  referred  to  a  fire  in  the 
year  1208.  Verily  a  thousand  years  are  but  as  yester- 
day to  a  verger ! 

He  wandered  back  again  to  the  subject  of  King 
John  and  said  that  he  could  not  even  write  his  own 
name,  or  at  least  that  he  did  not  when  he  signed  the 
Magna  Charta;  "  he  made  his  cross,"  he  said.  It  was 
suggested  that  he  probably  made  his  cross  because 
it  expressed  the  way  he  felt;  but  one  should  never 
offer  even  a  mild  pleasantry  to  an  English  verger. 

The  tomb  of  the  widow  of  Izaak  Walton  is  here, 
with  the  inscription  that  Izaak  himself  sadly  wrote: 
"Alas,  she  is  dead!  A  woman  of  remarkable  pru- 
dence and  of  the  primitive  piety,"  so  he  declared, 
"  adorned  with  true  humility  and  blessed  with  Chris- 
tian meekness. '  Study  to  be  like  her  " — an  admoni- 
tion not  likely  to  be  taken  with  great  seriousness  by 
the  suffragettes  of  to-day. 

We  thought,  as  we  looked  up  at  the  cathedral  from 
the  outside,  of  that  most  interesting  of  all  the  events 
that  had  ever  happened  here ;  for  Charles  the  Second 
watched  the  Battle  of  Worcester  from  the  cathedral 
tower.    Few  men  have  the  experience  of  looking  idly 


The  tipping  castle  at  Bridgnorth 


Old  black-akd- white  houses,  with  passion  flowers,  at  Ormsley 


Worcester  Cathedral  from  the  river 


THE  WAY  TO  WORCESTER 73 

on  while  others  fight  and  die  for  them.  But  he  amply- 
rewarded  Worcester — or  at  least  he  thought  that  he 
did — for  he  gave  to  the  city,  after  he  finally  came  to 
his  throne,  a  motto  to  put  upon  the  city  arms. 

Our  incomparable  verger,  hearing  one  of  us  say 
that  we  were  going  back  to  the  china  factory  from  the 
cathedral,  gave  us  a  final  pleasurable  experience,  for 
he  borrowed  from  another  verger  a  key  and  led  us 
through  a  long  and  fascinating  cloistered,  shadowy 
path,  at  the  end  of  which  he  opened  an  iron  grill  and 
let  us  out  to  reach  the  factory  by  a  very  short  cut. 

The  great  porcelain  factory  of  Worcester  is  really 
of  more  intrinsic  importance  than  the  cathedral,  for 
the  factory,  in  its  notable  artistic  history,  stands  at 
the  head  of  all  the  porcelain  factories  of  England, 
whereas  the  cathedral,  beautiful  as  it  is,  is  not  of  the 
very  first  importance.  While  we  were  in  the  cathe- 
dral we  had,  at  the  suggestion  of  the  factory  manager, 
who  said  it  w^ould  be  carefully  looked  after,  left  our 
car  in  the  courtyard  of  the  works,  a  shrub-bordered 
and  pleasant  place,  with  notices  everywhere  that  the 
employees  were  absolutely  forbidden  to  accept 
gratuities. 

To  go  to  a  factory  where  famous  old  porcelain  was 
made  in  the  periods  most  highly  regarded  by  col- 
lectors, and  where  fine  porcelain  is  still  made,  is  the 
last  word  in  the  study  of  that  ware.  The  factory  has 
a  show-room  for  the  new  and  a  museum  with  per- 
fectly arranged  examples,  in  periods,  of  all  their 
manufactures.  There  is  no  vagueness;  there  are  no 
doubts — they  know  whereof  they  speak  and  the  tradi- 
tions of  the  factory  are  a  matter  of  pride.  In  addi- 
tion they  most  courteously  show  all  the  processes  of 
manufacture,  and  it  is  interesting  to  see  that,  except 
in  the  mills  and  mixing  rooms,  there  is  not  the  hustle 
and  bustle  of  machinery,  but  the  unexpected  order- 
liness and  quiet  of  handwork.    But  that  it  would  be 


74 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

impossible  to  do  everything  by  hand  may  be  inferred 
from  the  fact  that  the  grinding  of  the  different  mate- 
rials varies  from  twelve  hours  to  ten  days,  after  which 
they  are  passed  through  silk  lawn  with  about  ten  thou- 
sand meshes  to  the  square  inch ;  or  at  least  so  we  were 
told. 

It  was  interesting,  in  these  works,  to  notice  that 
women,  except  those  of  the  art-student  type  who  do 
some  decorating,  are  employed  at  tasks  requiring 
nothing  more  than  automatic  skill,  the  better  work 
being  given  over  to  the  men ;  the  master- workmen  be- 
ing mostly  sallow,  round-shouldered,  mustached,  ca- 
pable and  very  quiet,  but  not  particularly  alert  of 
aspect. 

It  was  very  interesting  indeed  to  see  how  much  is 
trusted  to  the  eye  and  hand  in  these  days  of  machin- 
ery, and  that  machinery  cannot  take  the  place  of  the 
finest  machine  of  all,  the  human  hand.  When  one  at 
length  leaves  the  factory  it  is  with  a  strong  impres- 
sion of  the  individuality  of  both  old  and  new  Worces- 
ter porcelain;  and  Doctor  Wall  and  the  Chamber- 
lains, the  old-time  makers,  now  seem  like  old  friends. 

With  a  final  glance  at  the  great  cathedral,  with  a 
final  sniff  of  the  aromatic  and  spicy  air  of  genuine 
Worcestershire,  we  go  whirling  again  on  our  way. 
And,  leaving  the  old  city,  we  go  past  a  soldier  with 
red-striped  trousers  teaching  a  pretty  maid  how  to 
ride  her  bicycle  and  seeming  not  at  all  displeased  with 
the  job,  past  donkey  carts,  past  houses  of  beehive 
windows  and  old  houses  of  ancient  brick,  and  avenues 
of  tremendous  elms;  and  we  remembered  having 
somewhere  heard  that  one  of  the  Gunpowder  Plot 
conspirators,  after  being  condemned  to  death,  was  re- 
prieved on  condition  of  going  to  Worcestershire  and 
never  leaving  there,  and  that  he  lived  for  forty  years 
thereafter  within  that  county.  We  thought  it  was 
no  wonder! 


CHAPTER  VIII 

BY  TEWKESBURY 

WE  came  to  a  river  where  young  men  in  cap 
and  gown  were  looking  on  at  other  young 
men,  without  cap  and  gown,  who  were  pre- 
paring for  boat-racing  practice.  The  caps  and 
gowns,  and  also  the  extremely  sketchy  costumes,  if 
they  could  fairly  be  called  costumes,  all  seemed  a 
natural  part  of  the  landscape  of  a  country  where 
schools  and  sports  are  among  the  most  prominent 
features.  Coaches,  male  not  mail,  megaphones  in 
hand,  looked  very  stilted  and  stiff  and  important  be- 
cause of  a  number  of  pretty  girls  that  looked  on 
big-eyed.  Across  the  river  beyond  the  broad 
meadows  arose  a  massive  tower,  and  we  knew  that 
it  was  the  tower  of  Tewkesbury  Abbey  and  that  the 
town  on  the  other  side  was  Tewkesbury  itself. 

We  went  up  a  street  extremely  broad,  consid- 
ering that  it  was  the  main  street  of  an  ancient  town, 
and  it  was  bordered  with  low  houses  on  either  side 
and,  naturally  enough,  with  a  noticeable  sprinkling 
of  ancient  and  interesting  inns;  we  say  naturally 
enough  because  it  was  at  one  of  these  Tewkesbury 
inns  that  Mr.  Pickwick  spent  an  exceedingly  pleas- 
ant time,  according  to  Mr.  Pickwick's  chronicler,  in 
the  course  of  which  there  was  served,  among  other 
things,  "  more  bottled  ale,  with  some  more  Madeira 
and  some  port  besides  " ;  also  that  "  the  case-bottle 
was  replenished  for  the  fourth  time,"  under  the  influ- 
ence of  which  combined  stimulants  "  Mr.  Pickwick 
and  Mr.  Ben  Allen  fell  fast  asleep  for  thirty  miles, 
while  Bob  and  Mr.  Weller  sang  duets  in  the  dickey." 

75 


76 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAI]^ 

It  was  at  the  very  edge  of  this  ancient  town  that 
the  Battle  of  Tewkesbury  was  fought;  one  of  the 
greatest  struggles  in  that  random  round  of  fighting 
known  as  the  Wars  of  the  Roses;  a  battle  deemed  of 
tremendous  importance  at  the  time,  but  which  has 
probably  left  no  more  definite  memory  than  that  of 
the  lines,  themselves  of  no  particular  importance,  but 
which  remain  persistently  in  one's  memory  as  Shake- 
speare's even  ordinary  lines  have  such  a  habit  of 
doing,  about  the  "  false,  fleeting,  perjured  Clarence 
that  stabbed  me  in  the  field  by  Tewkesbury."  And 
it  is  one  of  the  curious  things  that  the  body  of  Clar- 
ence should  have  been  brought  to  Tewkesbury  for 
burial;  and  how  little  anyone  could  have  imagined 
that,  instead  of  the  lengthy  and  laudatory  drawn-out 
inscription  telHng  of  titles  and  honors,  placed  upon 
that  tomb,  the  world  remembers  only  these  few  con- 
demnatory words. 

There  are  other  memorials  more  important  and 
interesting  than  that  of  Clarence,  particularly  the 
beautiful  piece  of  work  which  has  come  to  be  called, 
through  the  irony  of  time,  the  Warwick  Chapel;  for 
this  was  built  five  hundred  years  ago  by  the  widowed 
countess  of  Richard  Beauchamp,  Earl  of  Aber- 
gavenny, and  she  spared  no  care  and  expense  in 
beautifying  it  with  lacework  in  stone  and  tender 
coloring;  and  the  irony  comes  from  the  fact  that 
the  work  was  not  quite  completed  when  the  sorrow- 
ing Isabelle  married  her  late  husband's  cousin,  the 
Earl  of  Warwick,  who  not  only  gave  the  widow  his 
name,  but  gave  name  to  the  very  memorial  itself! — 
which  really  seems  to  have  been  rather  hard  on  the 
first  husband,  who  could  not  even  call  his  grave 
his  own. 

But  here  again  we  see  that  we  do  not  talk  of  our 
travels  in  an  orthodox  and  time-honored  way,  for  we 
are  actually  discussing  the  tombs  of  the  abbey  of 


BY  TEWKESBURY 77 

Tewkesbury  before  we  come  to  the  abbey  itself.  But 
it  is  not  in  the  least  in  disregard  of  the  abbey,  which, 
standing  at  the  farther  end  of  the  town  and  shaded 
by  enormous  blossoming  horse-chestnut  trees  so  thick 
and  so  big  as  to  give  the  interior  a  twilight  gloom 
even  in  the  bright  sun,  is  one  of  the  most  important 
churchly  edifices  in  all  England. 

This  is  indeed  a  noble  building,  with  the  splendid 
massiveness  of  the  very  best  of  the  ancient  Norman 
style;  it  is  not  only  massive  but  beautiful,  and  not 
only  beautiful  but  of  superb  impressiveness.  That 
much  of  the  stone  used  in  building  was  actually  car- 
ried here  from  Normandy  may  have  subtly  aided  in 
giving  it  the  Norman  air  and  the  Norman  feeling. 

The  enormous  square  tower,  rising  with  magnifi- 
cent dignity,  and  the  splendid  interior  of  the  abbey, 
with  its  huge  plain  columns,  its  somberness,  its  dig- 
nity, are  never  to  be  forgotten  for  stern  and  inflexible 
effectiveness. 

We  did  not  stay  long  in  Tewkesbury.  We  felt  to 
the  full  the  tremendous  impressiveness  of  the  abbey 
with  its  superb  tower  and  its  wonderfully  arched 
front  and  its  great  pillars  all  looking  just  as  they 
did  to  the  Normans  of  so  many  centuries  ago;  but 
we  wished  to  leave  with  that  impression  unforget- 
table. The  abbey  is  one  of  the  buildings  whose  mem- 
ory is  never  blurringly  confused  in  even  the  slightest 
degree  with  the  memory  of  any  other  abbey  or  cathe- 
dral.    It  stands  all  by  itself. 

Yet  Tewkesbury  is  another  of  the  overlooked 
places  of  England,  and  this  is  because  it  is  a  little  off 
the  main  line  of  railway  and  is  reached  only  by  a 
branch,  which  thus  keeps  it  off  the  natural  list  of 
stopping-places  of  tourists  who  are  tied  to  tourists' 
schedules.  Our  visit  to  Tewkesbury  was  one  of  the 
most  striking  examples  of  the  opportunities  that  open 
to  those  who  go  by  motor. 


78 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

Before  leaving  the  place  it  is  worth  while  saying, 
for  it  is  an  admirable  point,  that  ancient  as  Tewkes- 
bury Abbey  is,  it  is  thoroughly  up  to  date  and  busi- 
nesslike in  its  reception  of  such  visitors  as  go  there. 
There  are  four  set  hours  each  day  at  which  a  salaried 
verger  shows  visitors  through  the  abbey  without 
gratuity,  and  those  who  wish  to  go  at  any  other  hour 
may  engage  him  for  a  small  fee  or  go  through  by 
themselves  and  read  the  cards  descriptively  placed  on 
the  tombs  and  in  the  chapels.  And  it  is  an  agreeable 
point  for  the  motorist  that  there  is  at  the  abbey 
entrance-gate  an  official  attendant  who  will  watch 
a  motor  car,  while  the  visitors  are  in  the  abbey,  for 
what  is  certainly  the  modest  sum  of  one  penny.  Thus 
there  is  a  variety  of  reasons  why  no  motorist  should 
allow  Tewkesbury  to  remain  an  unvisited  place! 

While  we  were  at  Tewkesbury  we  knew  that  our 
route  was  planned  to  bring  us  very  near  this  place 
on  our  north-bound  distance,  many  days  later,  and 
we  could  not  but  wonder  what  Fate  had  in  store  for 
us  in  the  many  intervening  miles  over  which  we  were 
to  go ;  and  it  is  pleasantly  anticipating  a  little  to  say 
that  when  we  did  pass  near  here  again  it  was  after 
experiences  even  more  delightful  and  a  journeying 
even  more  successful  than  we  could  possibly  have 
hoped. 

We  left  Tewkesbury  without  a  long  stay,  not  only 
because,  as  we  have  said,  we  wished  a  brief  and  vivid 
impression  that  could  by  no  possibility  be  lessened, 
but  because  of  another  reason  which  would  have  hur- 
ried our  departure  in  any  case;  and  this  was  that 
Gloucester,  which  was  our  next  objective  point,  was 
where  all  of  us  were  to  receive  mail,  and  that  as  it 
was  a  Saturday  we  must  get  there  before  the  noon 
closing.  And  this  experience  warned  us  not  to  have 
mail  forwarded  in  care  of  banks,  but  to  have  it  sent 
in  care  of  the  poste  restante  of  postoffices,  for  this 


BY  TEWKESBURY 79 

would  give  us  the  opportunity  of  getting  mail  even 
in  the  early  morning  or  the  early  evening,  as  well  as 
to  some  extent  on  Sundays,  instead  of  holding  us  in 
any  degree  to  banking  hours.  As  to  the  banks  and 
the  getting  of  money,  we  carried  with  us  checks  of 
a  kind  that  were  cashable  practically  anywhere,  even 
at  the  hotels. 

It  was  an  eleven-miles'  run  to  Gloucester,  follow- 
ing the  ever-broadening  Severn,  and  for  part  of  the 
distance  we  motored  along  a  low-rising  ridge  that 
gave  us  pleasant,  sweeping  views  of  the  regulated 
landscape;  and  that  is  really  the  only  expression  for 
it,  for  it  seemed  really  a  regulated  landscape,  as  do 
the  landscapes  of  the  greater  part  of  England ;  there 
is  a  certain  orderliness,  as  of  their  having  had  the  care 
of  many  centuries,  which  is  apparent  even  in  almost 
the  wildest  regions.  Again  we  were  passing  cot- 
tages with  splendid  roses  upon  their  fronts,  and  again 
we  were  passing  the  half-timbered  black-and-white 
houses — and  these  should  be  admired  not  only  for 
their  own  delightful  sake,  but  because  this  part  of 
England  is  their  stronghold,  and  after  a  while  we 
were  to  miss  their  crisscrossings,  their  color  contrasts, 
their  quaintly  simple  intricacy  of  design.  Yet  al- 
ways through  England  there  is  something  of  interest 
to  fill  their  place. 

Gloucester  is  a  modestly  and  earnestly  busy  place, 
with  a  fine  air  of  civic  dignity.  The  great  cathedral, 
which  has  dominated  the  city  for  miles  as  we  ap- 
proached it,  seems  to  have  hidden  coyly  away,  now 
that  we  have  actually  entered  the  town,  and  the  route 
to  it  must  be  searched  for;  but  the  English  police- 
man, at  no  matter  how  busy  a  crossing,  is  never  too 
busy  to  answer  questions. 

The  cathedral  is  one  of  exceeding  beauty,  although 
its  original  Norman  characteristics  were  largely  al- 
tered some  centuries  ago  to  another  style  of  archi- 


80 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

tecture,  and  on  top  of  this  came  a  great  deal  of 
fussing  in  the  past  centuries  in  the  way  of  those  al- 
terations that  are  mistakenly  called  restorations.  In- 
stead of  being  a  Norman  cathedral,  as  it  should  be, 
it  is  really  of  the  Perpendicular  style — a  style  which 
makers  of  English  guide-books  who  are  destitute  of 
humor  love  to  abbreviate  to  "  Perp."  Most  of 
Gloucester  Cathedral  is  still  so  fine  and  imposing  as 
to  show  how  difficult  it  is  to  spoil  entirely  the  superb 
creations  of  the  early  architects.  And  even  yet  much 
of  the  interior  of  the  cathedral  is  strictly  Norman; 
and  it  may  be  added  that  there  is  an  ancient  chill 
within  the  building  which  has  certainly  come  down 
from  Norman  days. 

When  you  come,  in  this  cathedral,  to  the  tomb  of 
the  eldest  son  of  the  Conqueror,  the  entire  past  comes 
back  with  vividness  and  you  feel  as  if  this  is  all  that 
is  needed  to  give  a  final  touch  of  verisimilitude. 

One  of  the  windows  of  this  cathedral,  the  great 
east  window,  is  among  the  glories  of  England,  for 
it  is  the  largest  stained-glass  window  in  the  country 
and  among  the  few  largest  of  the  world.  You  are 
told  with  an  amusing  earnestness — everything  is 
earnest  in  Gloucester — that,  whereas  York  Minster's 
greatest  window  contains  2,574  square  feet  of  glass, 
this  window  contains  2,736  square  feet;  but  one  need 
not  at  all  concern  himself  with  such  detail,  for  its 
grandeur,  immensity  and  general  effectiveness  are 
what  are  important;  and  it  brings  closely  back  to  us 
the  great  days  of  the  past  when  we  realize  that  this 
was  a  memorial  window  to  the  Battle  of  Crecy  and 
that  of  the  many  armorial  shields  inserted  beside  it 
quite  a  number  of  these  identical  shields  still  remain- 
ing were  put  in  by  the  very  survivors  of  the  battle. 

When  we  went  into  the  cathedral  the  choir  were 
singing,  somewhere  out  of  sight,  and  the  organ  was 
softly  playing,  and  all  was  sweetly  and  gently  im- 


OXE    OF    THE    MAXY    CLIPPED    GARDENS    THAT    WE    PASSED 


Quaint  roadside  cottages  in  the  Severn  valley 


BY  TEWKESBURY 81 

pressive;  and  then  the  impression  was  added  to  by 
a  long  line  of  surpliced  men  and  choir-boys  slowly 
filing  out. 

Then  we  went  into  the  cloisters ;  and  such  cloisters  1 
— for  they  are  marvelously  and  extravagantly  beau- 
tiful in  their  carving  of  stone,  their  roof  of  stone 
lace,  their  exquisite  fan  tracery  and  in  the  wonderful 
beauty  of  it  all  even  to  the  smallest  detail;  and  with 
the  beauty  there  is  at  the  same  time  a  fine  nobility 
and  dignity.  And  all  this  is  such  a  tremendous  con- 
trast to  the  plain  and  severe  interior  of  the  cathedral 
itself. 

We  wandered  about  for  quite  a  while,  alone,  in 
these  cloisters,  for  such  a  place  is  not  one  for  leav- 
ing hurriedly,  and  the  soft  sound  of  the  cathedral 
chimes  came  like  music  in  a  romantic  dream.  And 
then  a  door  opened  and  a  dean  came  walking  through, 
with  black  gaiters  buttoned  tight  from  knee  to  foot, 
and  with  black  coat  with  queer  up-standing  collar, 
and  with  white  collar  buttoned  at  the  back,  and  with 
a  strange-structured  hat,  which  he  put  on  as  he 
emerged  from  the  church  into  the  cloisters.  A  very 
solemn  figure  he;  no  one  could  really  be  half  so  sol- 
emn as  he  looked  as  he  paced  along  in  the  slowest  of 
slow  dignity.  Then  the  door  from  the  church  opened 
again  and  there  came  bursting  out  a  bevy  of  wrig- 
gling, giggling,  nudging,  whispering  choir-boys. 
But  all  their  wriggling  never  carried. even  the  boldest 
of  them  within  twenty  feet  of  that  dean !  He  had  an 
aura,  that  man!  And  then  the  preposterous  dean 
vanished  and  the  boys  vanished  and  we  were  alone 
again  and  the  chimes  continued,  more  sweet  and  calm 
and  restful  than  before. 

We  did  not  go  about  in  the  city  of  Gloucester  to 
any  extent;  we  saw  it  well  enough  as  we  rode  along 
its  well-paved  streets  in  necessarily  passing  through 
the  place,  and  as  a  city  it  gave  a  pleasant  effect,  but 


82 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

not  one  specially  to  be  remembered.  Among  the 
spots  held  in  particular  remembrance  by  the  towns- 
folk is  the  church  where  Whitefield  preached,  and  this 
reminded  us  that  Americans  should  not  slight  their 
own  places  of  interest,  for  within  a  mile  of  our  own 
home  is  an  unmarked  place  where  Whitefield 
preached. 

From  Gloucester  we  turned  our  car  toward  a 
region  that  had  long  fascinated  us,  the  region  of 
Tintern  Abbey  and  the  Wye. 


CHAPTER  IX 

THE  VALLEY  OF  THE   WYE 

WE  came  to  the  forest  of  Dean,  one  of  the 
great  royal  forests  of  the  past,  but  now 
rather  more  a  forest  in  name  than  in  fact, 
although  there  are  still  great  areas  of  it  in  a  wood- 
land landscape  of  beeches  and  oaks ;  but  though  there 
are  some  monarchs  among  the  trees  (as  befits  a  royal 
forest!)  most  are  mere  saplings,  for  the  forest  has 
been  severely  used.  The  forest  is  to  a  great  extent 
now  a  mining  district,  and  the  only  villages  are  min- 
ing villages,  and  yet,  although  there  are  only  poor 
little  houses,  we  found  greenery  and  not  desolation 
and  for  much  of  the  distance  there  was  a  wide  space 
of  green  turf,  with  sheep  freely  grazing  upon  it,  be- 
tween the  road  and  the  forest. 

The  villages  are  few  and  there  are  few  scattered 
houses  and  we  are  entirely  away  from  the  region  of 
great  private  estates,  but  the  road  is  marvelously 
well  made  and  well  kept;  and  then  we  catch  sight  of 
a  cute  baby  donkey  beside  its  mother,  a  little  thing 
three  feet  high  not  counting  the  ears,  which  extended 
upward  for  a  foot  or  so  more;  and  the  horn  was 
honked  suddenly,  whereat  the  little  donkey  kicked 
and  jumped  in  hilarious  excitement  while  its  mother 
looked  on  quite  placid,  pleased  and  proud;  and  a 
solemn  old  countryman  who  was  passing  dropped  the 
solemnity  from  his  visage  and  laughed  until  we  could 
see  far  down  his  throat,  and  it  was  like  looking  down 
into  a  great  red  hole  surrounded  by  yellow  ivory. 

Going  through  this  rather  prosaic  forest  was  an- 

83 


84 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

other  example  of  the  satisfaction  that  comes  from  mo- 
toring, for  to  go  through  such  a  region  slowly  would 
be  rather  tiresome,  whereas  to  go  rapidly  through  it 
in  a  motor  car,  with  swift  and  constant  change  of 
scene,  and  with  every  moment  coming  upon  some- 
thing new,  made  the  journey,  although  not  nearly  so 
interesting  as  through  most  parts  of  England,  a  pleas- 
urable experience. 

We  left  the  forest  and  entered  another  fine  and 
pleasant  region,  and  finally  motored  down  and  down 
a  tremendously  long  and  easy  road,  with  curve  after 
curve  constantly  opening  upon  new  attractiveness, 
and  came  into  Monmouth,  a  town  nestled  in  a  hol- 
low among  hills  and  itself  standing  on  a  slightly- 
rising  bit  of  lower-rising  ground  along  the  river  Wye. 
We  entered  through  narrow,  twisty  streets,  and 
emerged  upon  a  little  open  space  which  bears  the 
proud  name  of  Agincourt  Square;  and  naturally 
enough,  for  it  was  here  in  Monmouth  that  Henry  the 
Fifth,  who  won  the  famous  Battle  of  Agincourt,  was 
born. 

An  inclosed  old-time  coach-yard  answered  for  the 
garage,  and  from  this  we  entered  the  old  hotel — so 
many  of  the  hotels  are  old  over  here! — through  a 
stone-paved,  stone-arched  entrance  passage  beside  a 
gloomy  room  in  which  were  dimly-gleaming  copper 
pans  and  those  silver  domes  that  the  English  people 
so  love  to  put  over  serving  dishes  that  they  are  likely 
to  put  a  very  big  one  over  a  very  small  egg.  There 
was  just  light  enough  to  see  that  there  was  not  a 
modern  utensil  in  the  kitchen;  and  the  range  itself 
was  almost  as  primitive  as  an  open  fireplace,  and  the 
pots  were  right  upon  the  coals,  and  the  kitchen  alto- 
gether seemed  to  be  almost  as  primitive  as  those  of 
the  monks  of  the  Middle  Ages;  one  is  often  forced 
to  wonder  why  the  keeping  of  the  old  is  allowed  to 
mean  the  keeping  also  of  the  inconveniences  and 


The  wikdow  of  Geoffrey  of  Mokmouth 


Red-coated  soldiers  going  to  church  at  Monmouth 


TiNTERN  Abbey 


The  roadside  inx  at  Alveston 


THE  VALLEY  OF  THE  WYE 85 

shortcomings  of  the  old.  Most  Americans  love  the 
old,  but  they  want  facilities  and  conveniences  also, 
whereas  most  of  the  people  of  England  do  not  love 
the  old,  yet  hold  obstinately  to  all  its  inconveniences. 
We  saw  here,  as  in  other  inns  in  England,  the  ex- 
planation of  the  length  of  time  so  generally  required 
to  serve  meals,  for  here  a  maid  would  necessarily 
have  a  long  walk  with  every  trayful.  Finding  the 
kitchen  old-fashioned,  we  naturally  found  the  rest  of 
the  place  equally  old-fashioned,  and  it  was  rich  in 
stone  pavements  and  unexpected  corners. 

It  had  been  the  intention  to  wire  this  evening  to 
the  railway  station  at  the  end  of  Severn  Tunnel  to 
arrange  for  passing  through  with  the  car  late  the 
next  afternoon.  The  Severn  rapidly  widens  into  a 
long  and  broad  bay,  and  the  tunnel  makes  a  short  cut, 
if  one  wishes  to  cross  to  Bristol.  The  expense  is  not 
very  much,  but,  with  European  love  of  detail,  it  va- 
ries very  much  according  to  the  kind  of  the  car  and 
how  it  is  shipped  and  whether  it  is  insured;  all  the 
gasoline,  or  petrol  as  it  is  universally  known  in  Eng- 
land, is  drawn  out  and  the  motor  is  placed  upon  a  flat 
car  for  the  tunnel  journey,  and  the  owner  of  the  car 
is  given  a  slip  showing  precisely  how  much  has  been 
taken  out,  and  at  the  other  end  of  the  tunnel  pre- 
cisely the  same  amount  is  put  back,  free  of  charge. 
But  we  missed  this  tunnel  experience  from  the  absurd 
fact  that  after  dinner  there  was  absolutely  no  way 
to  telegraph;  the  government-owned  system  having 
shut  down  about  six  or  seven  o'clock,  not  to  reopen 
that  evening  and  to  give  only  a  brief  hour  the  next 
day,  Sunday.  And  Sunday  would  not  do,  for  the 
tunnel  will  not  take  a  car  unless  notification  is  given 
on  at  least  one  day  previous  to  the  passage,  and  Sun- 
day was  to  be  our  day  for  crossing.  We  had  planned 
a  trip  going  down  one  side  of  the  bay  and  then  cross- 
ing by  tunnel,  but  by  our  enforced  new  plan  we  had 


86 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

a  vastly  pleasanter  experience  than  going  through  a 
smoky  tunnel  and  we  avoided  all  the  risk  of  the  un- 
usual in  tunnel  transit — had  we  lost  the  car,  of  course 
the  insurance  would  have  repaid  us  a  certain  sum,  but 
it  could  not  have  recompensed  us  for  the  break- 
ing up  of  arrangements  and  the  stoppage  of  the 
journey. 

As  it  was,  we  had  an  exceedingly  beautiful  ride 
back  to  the  head  of  the  bay  and  thence  along  the 
other  side;  and  it  did  give  us  an  idea  of  government 
ownership  to  find  that  even  if  one's  necessity  were 
very  great  it  would  be  impossible  to  send  a  telegram 
in  the  evening  in  a  town  the  size  of  Monmouth. 

It  was  Saturday  evening  and  the  streets  were 
thronged  with  a  Saturday-evening  crowd,  and  dark- 
ness did  not  decrease  the  number,  and  a  humming 
chir  of  sound  came  up  to  the  hotel  windows.  Then 
suddenly  there  fell  a  silence,  and  there  came  a 
woman's  voice,  of  exceeding  depth  and  softness,  that 
rose  and  fell  in  solemn  singing  cadences.  It  was  all 
perhaps  quite  commonplace  enough;  it  was  only  a 
Salvation  Army  girl;  but  it  was  thrilling,  and  not 
only  impressed  us,  but  it  absolutely  silenced  and 
stilled  the  hundreds  of  people  who  had  been  walking 
up  and  down,  laughing  and  talking.  The  voice 
ceased,  and  there  followed  a  very  Boanerges  of  a 
preacher,  whose  tremendous  voice  was  of  so  little 
impressiveness  that  it  was  almost  instantly  drowned 
by  a  recurrence  of  the  noises  of  the  all-at-once- 
indifferent  crowd. 

The  morning  was  as  quiet  as  an  English  Sunday 
morning  can  be,  and  through  the  silence  there  came 
now  and  then  the  vague  sound  of  choir-boys  singing, 
and  there  softly  came  the  lovely  chiming  of  the 
ancient  church  bells ;  and  there  seemed  to  be  an  added 
loveliness  of  sound  when  we  realized  that  we  were 
listening  to  the  very  chimes  brought  from  Calais,  in 


THE  VALLEY  OF  THE  WYE 87 

the  long,  long  ^go  by  Henry  the  Fifth,  Shakespeare's 
Prince  Hal. 

We  motored  quietly  about,  and  first  went  down  to 
a  picturesque  bridge  of  old  red-stone  arches  across 
the  Monnow,  which  here  flows  into  the  Wye,  and  we 
drove  through  a  highly  pictorial  ancient  gateway, 
with  curious  angles  and  curves,  in  the  center  of  the 
bridge. 

Thence  we  motored  back  to  a  higher  part  of  the 
town  into  a  road  from  where  we  looked  across  level 
meadows  in  the  foreground  of  a  very  lovely  view, 
and  on  the  other  side  of  the  road  stood  an  old  build- 
ing that  had  in  its  second  story  an  oriel,  mullioned 
stone  window  of  remarkable  distinction  and  beauty, 
and  it  pleased  us  to  learn  that  this  was  called  the 
window  of  Geoffrey  of  Monmouth,  for  he  is  so  de- 
lightfully kept  in  memory  by  his  chronicles  that  it 
was  good  to  know  that  his  memory  is  also  kept  in 
mind  by  such  a  window;  and  ever  afterwards,  when- 
ever we  come  across  his  name  or  his  writings,  we  shall 
be  sure  to  form  a  picture  of  him  sitting  at  work  at 
this  window  overlooking  the  river  and  the  meadows. 

Just  around  the  corner  is  the  ancient  church  of 
the  town ;  a  church  which  is  indeed  unusually  ancient, 
but  which  does  not  look  so,  for  it  has  been  so  altered 
and  restored  as  to  suggest  nothing  of  the  decrepitude 
or  ruin  of  ancient  architecture,  and  it  is  delightfully 
usable  after  all  these  centuries.  Beside  it  is  an  old- 
time  churchyard  house,  bowered  in  jessamine  and 
roses,  and  all  about  are  flowered  paths  and  pleasant 
shade,  and  all  looks  quite  pleasant  and  attractive. 

Up  a  narrow  street  toward  the  church  came  the 
beat  of  drum  and  blare  of  trumpets,  and  it  was  six 
hundred  soldiers  from  the  garrison  being  led  quick- 
steppingly  to  church,  and  as  they  came  in  sight  they 
were  a  blaze,  a  very  conflagration,  of  scarlet,  led 
by  their  scarlet  band. 


88 TOURING  GREAT  ERITAUNT 

The  bandsmen  laid  the  drums  on  flat  gravestones 
beside  the  church  entrance;  and  they  observed  the  in- 
junction to  watch  and  pray  by  going  inside  to  pray 
and  leaving  just  a  sentry  outside  to  watch  the  boys 
of  the  town;  and  one  small  boy  came  and  stood  en- 
tranced beside  the  big  drum  and  almost  touched  its 
two  sticks,  laid  cross-wise,  and  beat  it  softly  in  imagi- 
nation, his  hands  making  the  motions,  while  the  sentry 
looked  tolerantly  on;  perhaps  we  were  looking  at  a 
prospective  Drum  of  the  Fore  and  Aft. 

Immediately  after  the  arrival  of  the  soldiers  there 
came  up  from  the  opposite  direction  two  officers,  in 
a  particularly  resplendent  motor  car  painted  in  yel- 
low and  black,  with  the  chauffeur  a  soldier  in  uni- 
form. The  officers  got  out  and  stood  stiffly  waiting 
while  the  soldier  took  up  their  swords,  which  had 
been  unbelted  and  laid  alongside  of  the  emergency 
brake,  and  put  them  in  their  scabbards,  and  the  offi- 
cers meanwhile  so  held  their  arms  out  of  the  way 
as  to  look  like  women  at  the  dressmaker's.  And 
the  whole  effect  was  as  that  of  a  nurse  with  children ; 
you  expected  to  see  the  chauffeur  fasten  a  last  stray 
button  and  straighten  their  hair  and  kiss  them 
good-by  and  send  them  into  church.  They  went  in; 
and  in  a  little  while  we  heard  the  six  hundred  voices 
joining  tremendously  in  "  God  Save  the  King! " 

When,  in  motoring  farther  about  the  town,  we 
went  past  the  barracks,  we  noticed  within  an  in- 
closure  a  building  of  the  style  of  Louis  the  Four- 
teenth, which  seemed  such  an  unusual  thing  to  see 
in  such  a  town  that  the  sentry  was  asked  to  tell  us 
about  it. 

"  Oh,  that  is  the  officers'  quarters,"  he  said;  and  he 
continued,  without  any  prompting  or  questioning  and 
with  an  amusingly  deprecatory  realization  that 
Americans  love  to  see  the  old:  "It's  only  new,  sir! 
You  can  see  the  date  upon  it,  1687."    And  how  such 


THE  VALLEY  OF  THE  WYE 89 

a  building  came  to  be  built  there  in  the  long  ago 
was  thus  to  remain  a  matter  for  curious  speculation. 

We  left  Monmouth  in  its  Sunday  peacefulness  and 
motored  off  down  a  sweetly  felicitous  valley  and 
faintly  the  sounds  of  the  ancient  chimes  came  to  us 
again  and  one  of  us  softly  quoted,  "  Solemn,  yet 
sweet,  the  church  bells'  chime  floats  through  the 
woods  at  noon  " — for  it  was  noon  as  we  left  Mon- 
mouth and  started  down  the  valley  of  the  Wye  to- 
ward Tintern  Abbey. 

It  was  a  beautiful  drive,  and  we  felt  that  we  were 
again  in  Wales ;  for  all  of  this  used  to  be  Wales  and 
was  only  arbitrarily  made  a  part  of  England. 

There  were  enormous  hedges  and  great  growths 
of  ivy  that  lay  thick  carpeted  under  the  trees  or  clam- 
bered over  the  high  walls  that  alternated  with  the 
hedges,  and  there  were  endless  lines  of  avenued  firs 
greened  to  their  very  bases,  and  from  time  to  time 
there  were  glimpses  of  the  river  shimmering  through 
the  trees  or  curving  around  delightful  bends.  We 
finally  drifted  down  a  long  avenue  beneath  arching 
beech  and  birch  trees,  the  most  charming  road  that 
we  had  thus  far  seen,  and  came  to  Tintern  Abbey. 

Tintern  Abbey,  with  its  associated  monkish  build- 
ings, is  now  but  a  cluster  of  roofless  ruins,  with  a 
tremendous  profusion  of  jacks  and  braces  arranged 
in  the  interior  in  a  desperate  effort  to  prevent  further 
falling,  for  so  much  has  already  tumbled  or  crumbled 
and  disappeared. 

The  ruins  are  nooked  in  a  bend  of  the  ever-bend- 
ing Wye,  with  hills,  thick-wooded  to  their  summits, 
rising  all  around ;  Tintern  is  in  the  center  of  a  green- 
hilled  amphitheater.  The  beautifully  pillared  in- 
terior, the  great  lovely  window-tracery  of  stone — 
everywhere  there  is  charm.  And  when,  realizing  the 
extreme  beauty  of  it  all,  we  remember  that  this  was 
a  monastery  of  the  Cistercians,  it  seems  very  curious 


90 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

indeed,  for  their  rules  as  to  simplicity  were  very  strict; 
there  were  to  be  no  stone  arches  on  their  buildings, 
there  was  to  be  no  colored  glass  in  their  windows 
(glass  of  any  sort  long  disappeared  from  this  ruin 
of  Tintern),  they  were  to  have  no  sculpture  or  pic- 
tures, there  were  to  be  no  chimes  and  only  one  bell 
should  be  struck  at  one  time,  their  altars  were  to 
have  only  one  candlestick  and  this  was  to  be  of  iron — 
with  such  rules,  and  more  of  the  same  character,  one 
would  expect  to  find  an  extreme  degree  of  severity 
in  any  Cistercian  building,  but  Tintern  Abbey  is  a 
fine  example  of  what  artistic  instinct  could  achieve 
even  when  restrained.  Restraint  is  one  of  the  chief 
distinctions  of  Tintern  and  with  that  restraint  are 
breadth  of  design  and  nobility  of  proportion. 

There  is  music  in  the  very  name  of  Tintern  Abbey. 
"  What's  in  a  name?  "  was  long  ago  asked;  but  there 
is  often  a  great  deal  in  a  name,  for  one  that  is  musical 
to  such  a  degree  as  this  certainly  gives  an  added  sense 
of  beauty  and  interest. 

The  name  of  Tintern  Abbey  is  familiar  to  a  great 
number  of  people,  with  the  sense  of  its  being  a  place 
of  unusual  interest,  because  Wordsworth  wrote  some 
lines  and  put  in  their  title  that  they  were  written  near 
Tintern  Abbey;  and  although,  as  a  matter  of  fact, 
the  lines  have  no  reference  to  Tintern  and  Tintern 
was  not  even  mentioned  in  them,  the  fact  that  the 
famous  Wordsworth  used  the  name  in  his  title  helped 
materially  to  make  the  abbey  famous ;  its  name  is  far 
more  famous,  for  this  reason,  than  is  the  still  more 
beautiful  Fountains  Abbey,  which  we  were  later  to 
see,  for  Fountains  has  never  had  any  great  novelist 
or  poet  put  it  into  literature. 

We  had  tea  in  the  shadow  of  Tintern,  at  a  little 
inn  incongruously  named  The  Anchor,  a  delightful 
little  inn  in  the  midst  of  a  garden  rich  with  gloire  de 
Dijons  and  with  wonderful  violas  that  have  as  many 


THE  VALLEY  OF  THE  WYE 91 

as  sixty  blossoms  on  a  single  plant.  It  was  a  most  at- 
tractive experience,  for  we  sat  at  a  little  table  in  the 
garden,  and  a  maid  who  was  as  pretty  as  English 
maids  can  sometimes  be,  had  a  voice  that,  when  she 
even  said  such  a  small  thing  as,  "  You  shall  have  it," 
was  softly  agreeable  and  somehow  suggestive  of  the 
English  plays  that  have  lately  been  coming  to  Amer- 
ica; and  the  whole  thing  seemed  almost  as  unreal  as 
a  stage  setting,  with  the  beautiful  ruin  beside  us  and 
the  flowers  all  around  and  mine  host  cutting  bunches 
of  roses  for  us  and  pointing  out  his  strawberry  beds 
and  a  monster  ruin  of  an  oak  traditionally  going  back 
to  the  days  of  the  monks  themselves.  Thus  delightful 
may  be  the  taking  of  tea  in  England. 

We  left  Tintern  by  an  easily-rising  road,  giving 
view  after  view  of  sheer  loveliness,  and  under  one  of 
those  avenues  which  we  have  come  to  know  as  typi- 
cal of  England,  with  trees  beautifully  arching  their 
branches  over  our  heads;  and  this  time  the  trees  are 
elms,  such  being  the  agreeable  variety  of  these  noble 
avenues. 

England  has  very  few  trees  according  to  forestry 
reports,  in  comparison  with  the  trees  of  other  lands, 
and  we  presume  that  these  reports  are  correct,  yet 
how  delightfully  such  trees  as  the  country  has  are 
placed  just  where  they  are  most  attractive  and  beau- 
tiful! Thus  far  we  have  assuredly  noticed  no  short- 
age of  trees  in  England  and  nothing  could  be  more 
attractive  than  the  way  they  are  alternated  with  the 
stretches  of  open  green. 

The  day  was  a  day  of  uncertain  glory,  with  part 
sun,  part  cloud,  part  dashes  of  rain  which  now  and 
then  gave  a  pleasant  dampness  but  not  enough  to  put 
up  the  top  of  the  car. 

At  the  mouth  of  the  Wye  we  came  to  Chepstow, 
with  its  stately  old  castle  splendidly  rising  on  the 
edge  of  a  cliff  beside  the  river.    Chepstow  is  another 


92 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

of  the  long  list  of  English  overlooked  towns,  and 
though  not  so  full  of  interest  as  some,  it  is  an  exceed- 
ingly attractive  old  place,  with  its  many  Lombardy 
poplars  and  with  the  entire  town  giving  an  impres- 
sion of  being  bowered  among  fine  roses. 

We  remember  the  place  in  particular,  such  being 
the  arbitrariness  of  travelers'  impressions,  by  the  fact 
that  there  were  two  small  boys  standing  in  perfect 
quiet  at  one  side  of  the  road  as  we  entered  the  town, 
when  suddenly,  moved  by  some  ever-to-be-unguess- 
able  impulse,  the  elder,  a  boy  of  six,  threw  down 
his  little  fat  brother  of  four  and  madly  dragged  him 
across  the  road  immediately  in  front  of  the  car. 
Well,  nothing  happened;  but  it  was  one  of  the  many 
arguments  for  always  being  sure  that  your  brakes 
are  in  good  working  condition,  for  there  are  so  many 
little  fat  toddlers  in  England;  the  cottages  are  full 
of  them  and  one  can  never  know  just  when  he  is  go- 
ing to  see  them  in  front  of  the  car  instead  of  in  front 
of  the  cottage. 

The  castle,  looking  as  imposing  and  interesting  as 
it  does,  ought  really  to  have  richness  of  association, 
but  it  really  does  not  have,  as  its  most  interesting 
memory  is  that  for  twenty  years  one  of  the  Regicides 
was  imprisoned  there,  and  the  little  cell  in  which  he 
died  is  still  shown.  Americans  have  a  general  im- 
pression that  all  of  the  Regicides  were  killed  by 
Charles  the  Second  and  this  is  largely  because  of  the 
relentless  pursuit  in  America  of  two  who  escaped 
there  and  helped  to  add  a  picturesqueness  to  the 
stories  of  early  American  days,  as,  of  the  story  of 
Hadley  church;  but  in  reality  the  lives  of  quite  a 
number  of  the  Regicides  were  spared,  thus  forming 
an  illustration  of  what  Enghsh  historians  call  "  un- 
exampled lenity," — it  being  lenity  to  let  them  wear 
away  their  lives  in  narrow  stone  and  iron  quarters! 

Chepstow  marked  the  farthest  point  of  our  advance 


THE  VALLEY  OF  THE  WYE 93 

in  this  direction,  and  from  here  we  turned  northward 
along  the  bank  of  the  Severn  estuary,  to  reach  a 
crossing  place.  We  came  to  Lydney,  in  the  center 
of  which  we  saw  a  really  splendid  ancient  town-cross 
of  the  fourteenth  century,  with  eight  long  steps  lead- 
ing up  on  each  of  the  four  sides  to  a  stone  cross  in 
the  middle.  Ancient  crosses  have  disappeared  from 
the  market-places  and  squares  of  so  many  of  the 
English  towns  that  it  is  a  pleasure  to  come  across 
those  that  exist  and  we  found  this  to  be  a  region  in 
which  quite  a  number  of  the  towns  still  possess  these 
interesting  memorials  of  the  past. 

And  we  found,  too,  even  along  the  Severn's  side, 
that  England  is  not  a  level  country  but  as  a  matter 
of  fact  is  quite  hilly. 

At  Lydney  there  is  a  ferry  over  which  one  may 
cross  to  the  other  side,  but  it  is  a  ferry  only  to  be 
used  on  week-days,  and  so  we  went  farther  on  our 
way  until  we  came  to  little  Newnham,  where  there  is 
also  a  ferry,  and  this  ferry  runs  on  Sundays  as  well 
as  on  week-days  and,  as  we  were  to  find,  by  night  as 
well  as  by  day. 

On  looking  for  the  ferry  and  the  ferryman,  a  griz- 
zled, slow  of  speech,  slow-voiced,  hairy-faced  sailor 
was  found,  and  he  was  quite  willing  to  cross  but  said 
that  he  could  not  do  so  until  high  tide. 

"  And  when  wiU  that  be?  " 

"  At  one  in  the  morning,"  he  answered,  gravely 
matter-of-fact.  We  pictured  ourselves  waiting  until 
that  hour  from  five  in  the  afternoon!  It  had  not 
occurred  to  the  ferryman  that,  if  he  was  willing  to 
take  us  over  at  one  in  the  morning  there  could  be  any 
objection  to  waiting,  on  the  part  of  his  would-be  pas- 
sengers ;  but  it  now  slowly  dawned  upon  him  that  one 
o'clock  in  the  morning  might  possibly  be  inconvenient 
and  so  he  added,  in  his  grave  and  matter-of-fact  way, 
"  Or  at  one  o'clock  to-morrow  afternoon." 


94 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

And  he  pointed  out  the  boat.  We  had  been  told 
that  there  were  primitive  boats  like  those  of  the  early 
Britons  still  used  on  the  Severn,  and  in  a  general 
way  we  had  been  on  the  lookout  for  them,  and  now 
we  saw  the  boat  which  apparently  had  given  rise  to 
the  story,  for  the  ferryboat,  although  not,  indeed,  so 
early  as  the  British  coracle,  long  antedated  these  pres- 
ent years  and  was  an  old-fashioned  keel  rowboat  upon 
which  it  seemed  absolutely  impossible  to  carry  a 
motor  car. 

"  I  lay  long  planks  across  that  boat  to  hold  the 
car,"  said  the  ferryman.  And  we  pictured  ourselves 
out  in  mid-stream  in  the  middle  of  the  night  on  the 
teetering  planks;  surely  nothing  could  seem  more 
hazardous,  and  it  did  not  seem  possible  that  the  man 
meant  anything  but  a  joke;  but,  curious  to  know  his 
ideas  more  fully,  we  asked,  "  How  long  a  passage 
would  it  be?" 

He  drawled,  "  Well,  maybe  an  hour,"  and  added, 
under  impulse  of  truthfulness,  that  his  last  passage 
had  taken  him  four  hours.  We  wondered  why  that 
motorist  could  have  been  so  desperately  eager  to 
cross,  especially  when,  after  all,  it  was  only  a  dozen 
miles  from  this  point  on  to  Gloucester  by  a  pleasant 
road. 

At  any  rate,  there  was  no  temptation  to  wait  for 
hours  even  had  the  ferryboat  been  safe,  and  so  we 
ran  on  to  Gloucester,  passed  once  more  through  the 
center  of  that  earnest  city,  and  turned  down  the 
other  side  of  the  Severn  on  the  road  to  Bristol.  The 
road  was  pleasant  with  pleasant  homes,  but  we  passed 
one  tragic  little  village  beside  the  great  estate  of  the 
lord  of  the  manor,  and  there  was  a  large  brimming 
pond  just  inside  of  the  stone  wall,  and  the  great  brick 
entrance-post  was  topped  with  huge  pineapples,  and 
there  was  a  long  stone-edged  ornamental  sort  of  canal 
much  like  a  Versailles  waterway  on  a  small  scale,  and 


THE  VALLEY  OF  THE  WYE 95 

it  had  an  edge  of  molded  stone  and  its  water  was  right 
at  the  level  of  the  grass,  with  rhododendrons  and 
other  lovely  growths,  and  a  peacock  strutting  about. 
The  contrast  between  these  manor  grounds  and  the 
forlorn  village  was  very  great ;  the  "  lord  of  the 
manor  "  means  a  great  deal  in  England,  and  the  very 
village  itself  is  often  owned  in  entirety  by  the  aristo- 
crat who  lives  adjacent. 

It  came  on  to  rain,  and  quite  hard  enough  for  us 
to  use  the  car-top  for  a  little  while — the  first  time 
thus  far — and  one  of  the  very  few  times  that  we  had 
the  top  up  in  the  course  of  the  entire  tour;  we  may 
add  that  never  in  the  entire  tour  did  we  even  get  out 
the  side-curtains,  for  the  rain  in  England  is  seldom 
a  hard  downpour  and  never  a  deluge,  but  the  drops 
seem  leisurely  to  seep  through  the  atmosphere. 
Probably  no  country  but  England  ever  counts  rain 
as  in  itself  a  pleasurable  incident;  and  its  most  fa- 
mous fisherman  expressed  quaintly  that  he  gave 
thanks  to  "  Him  that  made  sun  and  us,  and  still  pro- 
tects us,  and  gives  us  flowers,  and  showers,  and  con- 
tent and  leisure  to  go  a-fishing."  Well,  we  were  not 
going  a-fishing  but  we  were  going  a-motoring  and 
we  could  practically  see  how  the  English  country 
folk  regard  rain,  for  we  not  only  remembered  that 
Walton  speaks  of  waiting  under  a  honeysuckle  hedge 
or  a  sycamore  when  it  showered  a  little  harder  than 
ordinary,  but  here  on  this  road  below  Bristol  we 
noticed  numerous  people  waiting  patiently  under 
thick-leafed  trees  in  perfect  dryness  and  in  the  calm 
certainty  that  the  rain  would  stop  before  it  had  time 
to  soak  through  the  leaves.  And  so  it  did  stop;  it 
just  came  down  in  drops  for  a  while,  without  driving 
or  coming  on  a  slant,  and  then  the  sun  was  out  again. 
But  the  storm  clouds  remained  beautifully  massed 
on  the  other  side  of  the  Severn,  and  there  were  superb, 
wide-sweeping  views  through  the  rain-washed  air  and 


96 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

across  the  great  river  to  the  distant  hills,  black  or  of 
deep  violet-blue,  and  to  horizon  lines  of  pale  buff  in 
the  setting  sun — a  sort  of  American  Revolution  effect 
in  buff  and  blue. 

From  Monmouth  to  Chepstow  and  back  to  Glouces- 
ter we  had  measured  forty-seven  miles  for  the  day, 
and  now  we  were  approaching  seventy;  not  a  long 
run,  but  we  had  realized  that  it  was  getting  dark  and 
were  aiming  to  go  on  until  we  reached  an  inn  of  which 
we  had  heard,  some  score  of  miles  below  Gloucester; 
and  a  man  of  whom,  in  the  gathering  gloom,  we 
asked  the  road  directions,  said,  after  giving  them: 

"  Where  are  you  from?  " 

"  We  came  from  America,"  was  the  reply. 

"  In  a  motor  car!  Good  Lord!  "  And  as  we  went 
on  we  heard  his  voice  still  trailing  on  in  the  darkness, 
"G-o-o-dL-o-r-d!" 


CHAPTER  X 

THE   WATEEY    CITIES    OF    BATH    AND    WELLS 

WE  reached  the  inn  and  found  it  an  old  one. 
Very  generally  the  small  inns  throughout 
England  are  old,  and  have  thereby  more 
attractiveness  than  they  would  have  if  new,  for  old 
inns  seem  somehow  to  give  the  idea  of  offering  the 
gathered  hospitality  of  many  generations.  This  par- 
ticular inn  was  the  Ship  Inn  and  the  very  name 
shows  that  it  must  have  been  estabhshed  by  some  re- 
tired old  sailor.  The  room  in  which  we  ate  was  up 
half  a  flight  of  stairs  and  was  a  tidy,  compact  little 
ship's  cabin;  and  a  fire  burned  in  the  little  fireplace, 
for  although  this  was  the  last  day  of  May  the  even- 
ing was  very  cool ;  and  a  round  table  was  attractively 
set,  and  Dickens  prints,  in  scarlet  and  black  and 
white,  were  arranged  around  the  grass-green  walls, 
and  there  was  clear,  sheer  muslin  at  the  windows, 
tied  in  the  middle  of  each  window  with  green,  and 
curtains  of  bright  blue  were  drawn  for  the  night; 
and  "  the  lydies  send  me  flowers  for  the  table,"  said 
the  hostess.  The  room  presented  a  peculiarly  bold 
and  extremely  effective  type  of  decoration  and  we 
were  surprised  to  find  it  in  this  little  wayside  place. 
Little  stairs  ran  queerly  in  every  direction  and  an 
old  hayloft  had  been  turned  into  a  charming  ball- 
room, reached  by  a  glass-inclosed  stone  stair,  and 
we  were  to  find  in  the  morning  that  there  was  a  little 
garden  in  which  to  eat  strawberries  and  cream  (and 
it  was  really  cream),  and  there  was  a  little  box- 
bordered  green  lawn  that  had  been  made  by  lifting 

97 


98 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

the  sod  from  the  old  field  beside  the  house,  and  there 
were  roses  clustered  along  the  high  stone  wall  which 
shut  out  the  road.  The  inn  stood  right  on  the  main 
road,  and  it  and  its  every  outbuilding  were  painted 
white  with  brilliant  green  trimmings,  and  all  of  the 
window-sills  of  the  inn  were  agleam  with  flowers. 

At  this  inn  we  made  our  first  acquaintance  with 
the  pinafore  for  grown  persons,  for  the  woman  who 
waited  upon  us  wore  an  unbelted  pinafore  of  white, 
reaching  from  her  shoulders  to  her  feet,  a  garment 
very  general  in  rural  England,  as  we  found. 

This  inn,  so  it  appeared,  was  owned  by  a  trust.  A 
principal  business  of  England  is  innkeeping;  and 
bicycles,  motorcycles  and  motor  cars  have  given  re- 
newed importance  to  the  inns  of  the  countryside; 
wherefore  the  capitalization  of  the  innkeeping  in- 
dustry has  been  a  natural  development,  and  on  the 
whole  probably  an  excellent  one.  The  passing  of 
the  old-time  innkeeper  is  at  hand,  and  an  effort  is 
being  made  to  preserve  the  charm  of  the  old-time 
inns  while  putting  them  in  charge  of  a  new  kind  of 
innkeeper.  There  are  several  companies  that  operate 
a  number  of  hotels  and  inns  throughout  the  country ; 
the  general  method  being  to  secure  long-established 
inns,  send  down  decorations  and  picturesquely  suit- 
able furniture  from  London,  put  in  plumbing,  select 
a  good  type  of  manager,  and  preserve  as  much  as 
possible  the  old-time  atmosphere  with  modern  con- 
veniences. One  of  these  hotel  trusts  is  headed  by 
five  lord  lieutenants  of  counties  with  whom  are  asso- 
ciated, according  to  the  prospectus,  a  few  earls  and 
a  scattering  of  admirals,  and  they  give  their  hotel 
managers  not  only  a  salary  but  a  commission  on  the 
total  receipts  exclusive  of  those  for  drink.  The  old- 
time  inns,  no  matter  how  attractive  they  may  be,  have 
based  their  importance  mainly  upon  the  receipts  of 
the  taproom;  but  the  new  type,  although  not  doing 


THE  WATERY  CITIES 99 

away  with  the  taproom,  tends  rather  to  discourage 
and  minimize  it;  at  such  inns  coffee  is  served  as  a 
matter  of  course  after  dinner,  and  it  is  possible  to 
get  a  drink  of  water  without  turning  the  house  upside 
down.  At  the  ordinary  old-time  inn,  water  and 
coffee  are  almost  ungettable  luxuries. 

It  may  be  added,  so  that  one  need  not  attach  too 
much  importance  to  mere  titles,  that  the  great  folk 
of  England  let  their  names  be  used  for  advertising 
purposes  with  astonishing  readiness,  and  that  al- 
though England  pretends  to  scoi'n  money-making, 
the  English  people  of  title  are  seldom  averse  to  earn- 
ing a  few  pounds  by  letting  their  names  be  used  to 
add  supposed  distinction  to  business  enterprise.  In 
this  particular  case,  however,  it  seems  to  be  an  excel- 
lent thing. 

The  tide  rises  high  in  Bristol  Channel  and  as  we 
approached  that  city,  after  our  night  at  the  Ship  Inn, 
we  saw  great  bare  stretches,  for  it  was  then  low  tide, 
and  there  were  stout  little  steamboats  stranded  in  the 
mud.  Bristol  itself  is  a  large  and  interesting  city 
and  possesses  a  beautiful  cathedral  in  which  beautiful 
music  was  going  on  as  we  entered;  but  it  occurred 
to  us  that  too  much  importance  need  not  be  attached, 
from  any  but  an  esthetic  standpoint,  to  gentle  music 
heard  in  the  twilight  of  an  old  cathedral,  for  music 
just  as  fine  and  quiet  as  this  sounded  here  when 
Bristol  was  the  center  of  the  slave  trade  of  the  world. 

In  an  unexpected  position  out  in  front  of  the 
cathedral  is  a  splendid  Norman  arch,  preserved  with 
remarkable  detail,  and  the  public  way  goes  under  it 
and  there  is  a  smaller  arch  beside  it,  and  the  two  to- 
gether are  irresistibly  remindful  of  Mrs.  Washing- 
ton's large  hole  for  the  cat  and  the  smaller  one  for 
the  kittens.  From  a  distance  Bristol  gives  the  effect 
as  of  an  entire  city  with  red-tiled  roofs,  and  the  place 
is  so  built  close  around  its  harbor  that  big  ships  may 


100 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

sail  up  into  the  very  heart  of  the  city.  And  they 
still  have  in  Bristol  the  cigar-store  Indian  who  long 
ago  vanished  to  the  happy  hunting  grounds  from 
America;  for  over  here  one  finds  him  still  preserved, 
only,  although  an  Indian  with  a  tomahawk,  he  is 
labeled  "  Demarara  negro  " ! 

Quite  away  from  the  center  of  the  city  is  the  church 
of  St.  Mary  Redcliffe  which,  although  smaller  and 
less  elaborate  than  the  cathedral,  manages  to  give 
the  impression  of  being  more  distinguished ;  and  after 
coming  to  such  a  conclusion  it  is  naturally  pleasant 
to  have  one's  judgment  royally  confirmed  by  being 
told  that  Queen  Elizabeth  said  of  this  church  that  it 
was  the  finest  parish  church  in  England.  And  up 
above  the  porch  you  are  shown  the  old  muniment 
room,  in  which  Chatterton  reveled  in  ancient  records 
and  dreamed  the  poetic  dreams  that  made  him  memo- 
rable. 

But  the  American  thinks  this  church  especially  in- 
teresting because  here  the  father  of  WilKam  Penn  is 
buried.  His  armor  still  hangs  high  on  the  church 
wall,  with  a  lengthy  inscription  beneath  it  giving  title 
after  title  that  he  had  won,  for  he  was  a  great  com- 
mander of  the  English  fleet,  and  ending  quaintly: 
"  &  with  a  Gentle  &  Even  Gale  In  much  Peace  arived 
and  Ancord  In  his  Last  and  Best  Port."  One  does 
not  wonder  that  Admiral  William  Penn  looms  very 
much  higher  in  the  English  mind  than  does  his  son 
William,  who  merely  founded  a  great  commonwealth. 

We  found  the  church  still  thickly  strewn  with  green 
rushes  and  sweet  as  with  the  smell  of  new-mown  hay, 
for  this  was  the  day  following  Whit  Sunday,  and 
on  every  Whit  Sunday  for  many  centuries  past  this 
church  is  thus  strewn  and  the  mayor  and  his  alder- 
men come  here  in  state.  Things  like  this  make  for 
the  fascination  of  England,  and  as  you  walk  over  the 
rushes  that  have  been  strewn  over  the  ancient  stone 


The  deserted  arcades  of  Bath 


A  Bath  chair  ix  oxe  of  the  curving  circuses 


The  charabancs  at  Bristol 


The  squarish  facade  of  Wells 


THE  WATERY  CITIES 101 

floor  in  carrying  out  an  ancient  custom,  you  seem  to 
hear  in  the  soft  rustle  the  awakening  of  the  centuries ; 
and  when  the  organ  softly  plays  you  realize  that,  in 
an  English  church,  someone  always  seems  to  be  play- 
ing the  organ  just  when  you  wish  an  effect  to  com- 
plete some  impression. 

Bristol  streets  were  full  of  a  Whit  Monday  crowd 
and  it  was  interesting  to  see  the  people  thronging  by 
the  ancient  "  nails  ";  round  metal  tables  looking  like 
capstans,  and  still  standing,  as  they  have  for  centuries, 
right  out  at  the  curb-hne  in  the  heart  of  the  business 
center;  for  these  tables  used  to  be  used  in  the  actual 
paying-over  of  money  and  gave  rise  to  the  expression 
of  "  paying  on  the  nail." 

The  people  everywhere  showed  a  persistent  desire 
to  be  run  down,  but  we  managed  with  some  difficulty 
not  to  oblige  them  and  got  away  for  a  run  of  a  dozen 
agreeable  miles  to  Bath,  a  little  city  peculiarly  full  of 
associations  of  the  famous  folk  of  England,  for  it 
was  long  the  most  fashionable  of  resorts  and  its 
waters  not  only  attracted  people  there  but  also  drew 
writers  to  describe  the  place  and  its  life. 

The  Bath  bun  is  still  there,  but  it  is  another  idol 
fallen,  for  although  it  is  edible  it  is  only  a  rather 
ordinary,  doughy,  eggy,  yeasty,  curranty  sort  of 
thing;  and  the  Bath  chair  is  still  there,  but  it  is  only 
an  amusing  baby-carriage  for  the  old,  pushed  by  a 
man — ^it  is  really  what  the  English  call  a  "  pram  " — 
and  the  old-time  pronunciation  of  the  city's  name  is 
still  there,  Bath  being  pronounced  in  a  long-drawn- 
out  way  with  the  "  a  "  impossibly  broad.  And  every- 
where in  Bath  there  are  fascinating  memories  of  the 
celebrities  of  the  past. 

The  famous  pump-room  is  preserved  and  used,  and 
from  the  description  of  Dickens  you  would  think  it 
a  "  spacious  saloon,  ornamented  with  Corinthian  pil- 
lars, and  a  music  gallery,"  but  in  reality  it  is  neither 


102 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

large  nor  beautiful  and  its  walls  are  of  stucco,  cov- 
ered with  a  cream-colored  paint.  The  bar  with  "  the 
marble  vase  at  which  the  pumper  gets  the  water  and 
the  yellow-looking  tumblers  out  of  which  the  visitors 
get  it "  are  still  there,  and  for  a  drink  of  the  water 
you  pay  two-pence  but  would  gladly  pay  a  great  deal 
more  than  two  shillings  to  be  rid  of  the  nauseating 
taste  of  the  lukewarm  stuff,  which  tastes  like  very 
bad  bath-water,  indeed,  and  that  it  could  ever  have 
been  fashionable  shows  to  what  lengths  fashion  can 
make  people  go.  For  example,  the  good  Mr.  Pick- 
wick, who  was  never  ill  in  his  life,  went  there  and 
regularly,  "  drank  a  quarter  of  a  pint  before  break- 
fast, and  then  walked  up  a  hill ;  and  another  quarter 
of  a  pint  after  breakfast,  and  then  walked  down  a 
hill." 

Underneath  a  great  part  of  the  city  are  astonishing 
Roman  remains,  for  those  particularly  sturdy  old- 
timers  built  great  baths  there,  which  have  been  largely 
excavated  in  modern  times;  and  it  was  a  curious 
bringing  together  of  the  ancient  and  the  modern  days 
to  notice  that  right  over  the  Roman  remains  were  a 
group  of  Whit  Monday  holiday-makers  tangoing  to 
a  street  piano's  music.  The  dancing  was  vulgarly 
done  and  a  policeman,  with  an  air  of  detached  aloof- 
ness, pushed  his  way  through  the  giggling  crowd  and, 
seeming  not  to  see  the  dancers,  tapped  the  music- 
maker  on  the  shoulder.  "  That's  enough,  my  man," 
he  said  curtly,  and  the  music  stopped  and  the  crowd 
melted  and  the  policeman  went  slowly  away  with 
his  fine  air  of  detachment  and  aloofness.  He  had 
managed  it  admirably — and  an  English  holiday  crowd 
is  not  very  nice  to  manage. 

In  the  very  center  of  the  city  still  stand  the  build- 
ings and  the  pillared  colonnades  of  the  time  of  Beau 
Nash  and  his  followers,  and  they  are  highly  pictorial 
and  very  effective,  and  nothing  could  more  strangely 


THE  WATERY  CITIES 103 

mark  the  difference  between  the  Bath  of  the  past  and 
of  the  present,  than  that  in  the  old-time  days  of  Bath 
these  arcades  were  always  thronged,  whereas  when 
we  saw  the  place  there  was  literally  not  a  soul  to  be 
seen  there,  although  within  a  stone's-throw  were  the 
great  jostling  crowds  of  people  out  seeking  amuse- 
ment. 

We  motored  about  a  little  in  Bath  through  the 
residential  streets,  because  of  their  being  so  full  of 
associations,  and  we  found  them  very  charming 
streets  indeed,  of  wonderfully  uniform  design  in  the 
classic- worshiping  taste  of  the  eighteenth  century; 
and  among  the  streets  are  great  curved  spaces  called 
"  circuses,"  also  lined  with  houses  in  classic  taste,  and 
the  circus  in  which  Lord  Clive  and  other  celebrities  had 
their  homes  has  thirty-six  houses  to  a  quadrant,  with 
classic  pillars  fronting  the  buildings,  which  are  three 
stories  in  height,  with  deep  moat-like  basements  be- 
tween the  houses  and  the  sidewalk.  It  was  curious 
to  notice  that,  for  these  houses,  instead  of  the  classic 
pineapple  ornamentation  which  the  designer  had  in- 
tended, the  English  builders  had  managed  to  make 
representations  of  English  acorns. 

We  went  out  of  Bath  up  an  interminably  long  hill, 
realizing  again  what  a  mistake  it  is  to  think  of  Eng- 
land as  a  level  country,  and  from  the  summit  we 
found  a  widespread  but  rather  featureless  view. 
Then,  having  reached  the  top  of  the  hill,  we  went 
down  and  down  a  long  descent — what  the  English 
call  a  stiffish  bit — ^noticing,  as  we  passed,  some  typical 
trampers  of  the  British  countryside,  a  man  and 
woman  in  the  shade  of  a  hedge.  Over  and  over 
again  we  have  noticed  in  England,  not  only  that  the 
country  is  tramp-infested  but  that  the  ancient  dictum 
that  "  it  is  not  good  that  the  man  should  be  alone  "  is 
taken  by  the  tramps  with  personal  application.  And 
here  is  a  curious  thing;  the  trampers  in  England  are 


104 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

English,  whereas  the  tramps  of  America  are  seldom 
American. 

We  are  on  our  way  to  another  old-time  watering- 
place,  this  next  one  with  the  watery  name  of  Wells, 
and  the  road,  although  very  hilly,  is  less  picturesque 
than  we  have  for  some  miles  been  having.  The  little 
newish  houses  are  built  tight  together  and  each  has  a 
little  stone- walled  garden  in  front;  at  one,  tea  is 
offered  with  a  phonograph  for  attraction;  at  another 
we  noticed  a  woman  in  a  mutch;  we  passed  a  great 
load  of  long  logs  drawn  by  four  horses  tandem;  we 
passed  a  gypsy  caravan  of  seven  wagons;  we  passed 
a  woods  of  so  deep  a  black  that  even  in  the  glow  of 
the  sun  we  could  scarcely  see  into  it ;  and  thus  we  got 
to  Wells. 

The  cathedral  of  Wells  is  dignified  and  beautiful, 
with  great  open  spaces  in  front  of  it,  and  is  easily 
remembered  by  its  squarish  facade,  which  looks  out 
across  a  great  open  space  which  adds  much  to  the  gen- 
eral impressiveness.  The  interior  gives  a  curiously 
white  impression  as  if  all  the  stone  had  recently  been 
scrubbed  clean,  and  in  its  center  is  an  aggressive  in- 
verted arch  effect  which  is  not  attractive,  these  in- 
verted arches,  with  criss-cross  curves,  having  been  put 
up  only  five  or  six  centuries  ago,  as  a  bracing  for  the 
central  tower,  and  they  give  an  air  as  of  a  sort  of 
modern  improvement. 

Remembering  that  we  were  not  to  spend  too  much 
time  with  the  minor  cathedrals,  we  did  not  stay  long 
at  Wells:  quite  a  number  of  visitors  were  there,  it 
being  a  holiday,  and  every  single  one  spent  most 
of  his  time  in  front  of  a  wonderful  old  clock  which 
has  a  half-dozen  or  more  little  knights  on  horseback 
that  go  galloping  madly  round  and  round  and  in  and 
out  as  it  strikes;  but  no  matter  how  wonderfully 
made,  it  is  only  a  medieval  plaything,  after  all,  and 
seems  to  be  out  of  place  in  a  building  of  such  dignity. 


THE  WATERY  CITIES 105 

The  little  knights  have  been  galloping  in  just  that 
way  for  centuries,  and  no  doubt  the  pilgrims  to  the 
cathedral  have  for  centuries  spent  their  time  watching 
the  evolutions  or  waiting  for  them  to  begin.  We 
looked  too! 

If  one  were  to  make  a  gastronomic  map  of  Eng- 
land one  would  follow  the  Bath  bun  country  with  the 
country  of  Cheddar  cheese;  and  of  course  we  ate  the 
cheese,  and  in  this  found  nothing  of  disappointment. 

It  is  a  run  of  only  five  miles  from  Wells  to  Glaston- 
bury, so  thick  crowded  are  the  places  of  interest  in 
England.  At  times  one  almost  believes  that  he  can 
scarcely  motor  for  the  sights,  for  they  do  demand  so 
much  attention !  Glastonbury  is  one  of  the  unusually 
famous  names,  because  it  was  for  so  many  centuries 
one  of  the  greatest  points  of  religious  pilgrimage, 
but  there  are  now  at  the  place  only  scattered  ruins. 
It  may  fairly  be  said  that  Glastonbury  is  a  poor  little 
town  living  upon  its  ruins.  It  is  peculiarly  a  place  of 
old  mullioned-windowed  ancient  houses,  used  for 
shops  and  inns. 

Our  attention  was  attracted,  as  we  motored  into 
the  town,  by  what  seemed  to  us  the  rather  odd  signs 
of  "Bespoke  Tailor,"  "Photographic  Chemist," 
"Bespoke  Shoes,"  "Jobmaster,"  "Tea  Experts"; 
and  the  local  name  for  their  own  upper  town  is 
"  Bove  Hill,"  with  not  a  thought  or  need  of  an 
apostrophe. 

We  spent  the  night  at  an  ancient  pilgrim  inn  which 
was  built  before  the  time  when  Columbus  made  his 
voyage  of  discovery; — always,  in  England,  we  keep 
coming  upon  such  marvelous  things  as  this — and  we 
found  it  a  very  comfortable  inn  indeed. 

Nothing  opens  early  in  England,  but  Glastonbury 
is  even  slower  than  the  slowest,  and  it  is  impossible 
to  get  anything  before  9.30  in  the  morning.  We 
wanted  not  only  to  buy  some  things  but  of  course 


106 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

to  see  the  famous  abbey  ruins,  but  as  the  ruins  were 
not  open  we  could  only  wander  through  an  ecclesias- 
tical gate  and  a  tidy  passage  till  we  came  to  a  row 
of  cottages,  each  with  a  tiny  garden  of  mingled  pota- 
toes, roses  and  fox-gloves,  and  to  a  little  chapel  of 
the  old  abbey,  with  some  villagers  eating  their  break- 
fast and  ha-ha-ing  inside  of  it,  and  from  this  vantage 
point  we  had  a  good  look  at  the  ruined  abbey  and  its 
arches,  over  a  low  stone  wall.  At  the  cottage  doors 
was  the  only  sign  of  active  life  in  the  place,  for  old 
women  stood  there  working  at  making  gloves,  like 
"  Hannah  at  the  window  binding  shoes." 

The  most  complete  relic  of  the  past  in  Glastonbury 
is  the  abbot's  kitchen,  which  stands  off  in  a  cow-field, 
and  is  a  large  square  building  with  a  tall  octagonal 
stone  roof  surmounted  by  a  sort  of  stone  tower.  We 
were  able  to  rouse  the  keeper  of  the  key  of  the  cow- 
field  and  so  saw  this  best  feature  of  all  the  ruins,  al- 
though it  was  so  early  as  nine  in  the  morning! 

We  entered  the  kitchen  itself  through  a  doorway 
and  found  it  a  large  square  room  with  four  fire- 
places in  the  corners  and  with  ingenious  air-holes  up 
above  for  carrying  away  the  smoke.  Altogether  it 
was  a  fascinating  relic  of  the  homely  life  of  the  past. 

Close  beside  Glastonbury  is  a  conical  hill,  some 
hundreds  of  feet  high,  called  the  Tor,  and  a  little 
tower  on  this  hill  can  be  seen  for  many  miles  in  every 
direction.  We  remembered,  as  we  motored  past  it, 
the  dramatic  tragedj^  that  occurred  here,  for  Henry 
the  Eighth,  bound  as  he  was  to  make  himself  supreme 
head  of  the  church,  found  himself  opposed  by  the  Ab- 
bot of  Glastonbury ;  and,  immensely  powerful  though 
the  abbot  was — ^in  fact,  because  of  his  very  power  and 
prominence,  so  that  he  might  be  the  most  striking 
of  examples — ^he  was  promptly  tried  for  treason  and 
hanged  upon  the  top  of  this  high  hill  so  that  all  Eng- 
land literally  might  see  that  Henry  was  in  earnest. 


THE  WATERY  CITIES 107 

Perhaps  it  need  not  be  added  that  it  was  not  neces- 
sary to  hang  any  more  abbots,  for  if  any  of  them  had 
opinions  they  promptly  forgot  them. 

We  left  a  just-awakening  town  as  we  motored 
out  of  Glastonbury,  and  a  clump  of  two-horse  tandem 
carts  in  front  of  a  wayside  tavern  at  the  edge  of  the 
town  showed  how  half  a  dozen  drivers  were  also 
awakening.  On  we  went,  past  roofs  of  tile,  weathered 
and  mossed  and  lichened  in  yellows  and  browns  and 
reds  and  greens,  on  past  a  village  of  roofs  of  thatch — 
and  all  was  old  and  all  was  picturesque  and  all  was 
interesting;  even  a  humorous  pig  reflectively  rubbing 
his  side  on  a  gray-boled  beech  while  he  looked  at  us, 
humorously  askant,  was  interesting — for  this  was 
England! 


CHAPTER  XI 

THE   COAST   OF  SOMERSET  AND  DEVON 

JUST  a  few  miles  out  of  Glastonbury  we  reached 
a  ridge-road  which  led  us  for  miles  between 
sweeping  views  over  levels,  and  we  knew  that 
a  bit  of  green  richness  not  very  far  off  on  our  left 
was  the  scene  of  Sedgemoor,  where  the  thousands  of 
brave  rustics  under  Monmouth,  with  their  scythes 
fastened  to  poles  (and  they  were  probably  sickles, 
which  are  all  that  one  sees  in  this  country!),  went 
down  in  defeat  before  the  regulars  of  King  James; 
they  had  no  chance,  poor  fellows,  even  had  not  the 
second  in  command  of  the  King  James  army  been  one 
of  the  greatest  of  soldiers,  destined  to  become  world- 
famous  under  the  name  of  the  Duke  of  Marlborough. 
All  is  peaceful  enough  now.  We  pass  a  flock  of 
sheep  with  a  dog  and  a  shepherd,  and  all  the  sheep 
have  been  sheared  and  it  gives  them  a  queerly  long- 
legged  effect;  there  are  neither  high  walls  nor  high 
hedges  to  shut  in  the  views ;  we  see  an  unknown  ruin 
on  a  distant  height;  we  see  a  fascinating  line  of 
ragged  pines;  we  see  a  great  pasture  thickly  dotted 
with  sheep  and  cattle  and  with  little  black  piglets 
to  add  color  contrast  and  pink  piglets  for  piquancy; 
we  pass  a  butcher-boy,  long-aproned,  on  his  bicycle, 
and  a  bicycled  parcel-postman,  and  we  go  through 
Bridgwater,  an  ancient  and  interesting-looking  town, 
and  we  do  not  stop  except  to  glance  for  a  mo- 
ment at  the  house  where  the  sturdy  Admiral  Blake 
was  born  and  at  a  little  statue  which  has  been  put  up 
in  his  honor — and  it  is  often  the  case  that  a  small 

108 


The  Tor  akd  its  tower,  near  Glastokbury 


Ox    THE    MOORS   OF    DeVON 


The  beautiful  coast  of  Devon 


A   TYPICAL  OLD    IKN    COACHYARD 


SOMERSET  AKD  DEVON 109 

statue  put  up  by  local  pride  means  more  than  would 
some  huge  ostentatious  memorial.  We  get  beyond 
Bridgwater,  and  we  pass  a  stage-coach  full  of  pas- 
sengers driving  to  town — driving  out  of  the  ancient 
past! — and  we  pass  traction-engines  towing  little 
cars  of  coal  or  brick  or  road  material  as  if  to  show 
that,  after  all,  we  are  still  in  the  present,  and  we  pass 
telegraph  poles  topped  with  little  sheet-iron  hats,  and 
traveling  venders'  carts  full  of  shelves  of  dishes,  and 
we  glide  through  a  fascinating  village  with  its  ancient 
square-towered  church  and  age-colored  houses  of 
brick  and  with  little  pony-carts  driven  sedately 
about. 

Flocks  of  sheep  are  grazing  in  the  fields  and  other 
sheep  go  wandering  along  the  roadside.  We  whirl  by 
a  field  ablaze  with  poppies  and  we  run  beside  low- 
edged  hills  which  gradually  rise  on  our  left,  and  in 
front  of  us  we  see  great  trees  that  bend  forward  over 
the  road.  There  are  hedges  again,  low  hedges,  and 
the  grass  is  thick  with  buttercups,  and  pink  campions 
grow  between  the  hedges  and  the  road.  We  pass  a 
'busload  of  "  camp-fire  girls,"  all  in  blue,  and  they 
cheerfully  wave  at  us  and  every  one  of  them  is  smiling, 
happy,  pretty  and  alert. 

We  run  into  the  plain  little  village  of  Nether 
Stowey,  and  here  we  pause  for  a  few  minutes  to  look 
at  the  house  where  Coleridge  wrote  the  "  Ancient 
Mariner,"  for  assuredly  such  a  house  is  a  place  of  a 
great  achievement.  It  surprises  us  that  Coleridge 
could  have  chosen  to  live  in  such  a  very  plain  house, 
on  this  very  unattractive  street,  for  the  house  has 
always  been  plain  and  the  street  has  always  been  un- 
attractive; it  could  not  have  been  the  low  rent  which 
attracted  him,  for  he  could  have  got  a  prettier  place, 
elsewhere,  for  less.  Perhaps  he  taught  near  this  cot- 
tage; but  it  is  for  his  use  of  words  and  not  for  his 
choice  of  home  surroundings  that  the  world  remem- 


no TOURING  GREAT  BRITAII^ 

bers  him;  perhaps  at  severely  plain  Nether  Stowey 
he  was  able  to  put  into  his  "  Ancient  Mariner  "  a  cer- 
tain grimness  that  he  could  not  have  achieved  in,  for 
example,^  the  charming  Lake  Country. 

Leaving  the  town,  we  are  at  once  at  the  foot  of  a 
hill,  and  on  into  the  open  country  again,  and  there 
are  wood-cutters,  and  women  stooping  along  the  road 
under  great  bundles  of  fagots,  and  we  follow  a  red 
shale  road  beneath  green  hedges,  and  we  are  looking 
for  the  sea,  for  we  know  we  are  nearing  it,  and  in  a 
little  while,  over  to  our  right,  just  a  few  miles  away, 
comes  a  sudden  glimpse  of  the  broad  and  glimmering 
Bristol  Channel,  and  a  great  headland  rises  abrupt 
and  grand,  and  with  this  headland  in  view  and  the 
wide  hills  about  us,  we  stop  for  another  of  our  al  fresco 
luncheons. 

We  go  on,  up  a  road  which  looks  out  over  a  splen- 
did expanse  of  the  sea ;  a  road  that  is  now  high  above 
the  bordering  greenery  and  now  goes  dropping  down 
below  some  undulation,  and  the  hedges  often  top 
ridges  of  earth  that  border  the  road;  and  now  and 
then  there  is  a  group  of  farm  buildings,  nestled  away 
from  the  sea,  and  great  moors  sweep  slowly  upward. 
Everything  is  beautiful  and  everything  is  glorious, 
the  hills,  the  headlands  and  the  water,  and  we  feel  how 
wonderfully  much  of  beauty  can  be  put  within  a 
short  space  of  a  few  hours. 

And  the  road  narrows,  and  there  we  dip  between 
stone  walls  and  meet  in  this  cut  fully  a  hundred  and 
fifty  sheep,  with  two  dogs  and  two  shepherds,  and 
although  we  almost  stop  the  car  to  let  them  all  pass 
there  is  much  trouble  and  agitation  among  the  flock, 
but  their  agitation  cannot  be  compared  with  that  of 
the  dogs,  who  find  themselves  thus  facing  a  great 
emergency  but  who  just  glance  at  the  shepherds  as 
if  to  say,  "  Don't  worry,  we  will  see  to  this  " ;  and  they 
do  see  to  it,  capably,  swiftly  and  efficiently. 


SOMERSET  AND  DEVON 111 

It  is  a  region  of  casement  windows  and  scarlet 
poppies  and  hawthorn  still  in  bloom  but  fading,  and 
in  one  place  there  are  myriad  fallen  blossoms  of  horse- 
chestnut  flowers  carpeting  the  ground  in  pink  beauty. 
A  man  goes  by  jauntily  dangling  a  rabbit;  and  horses 
are  tugging  a  huge  log;  there  are  shirt-sleeved  farm 
laborers  in  waistcoats  of  green-and-yellow  velveteen, 
and  there  are  white-whiskered  men  driving  little  two- 
wheeled  carts  behind  fat  little  white  ponies,  and  you 
cannot  imagine  any  such  ponies  with  different  kinds 
of  men  or  any  such  men  with  different  kinds  of  carts 
or  ponies,  for  all  must  have  originated  together;  it 
all  seems  so  perfectly  natural. 

We  come  to  a  stone  building  with  its  front  covered 
with  the  most  remarkable  roses  we  have  ever  seen,  in 
a  glory  of  white  and  red  along  the  entire  face  of  the 
building.  And  we  particularly  notice  the  exquisite 
La  Marque  rose  with  fully  a  thousand  blossoms  in  ex- 
quisite white,  and  there  is  also  a  "  Glory  of  Die 
John,"  as  the  sole  inhabitant  of  the  building  tells  us ; 
at  least,  the  sole  inhabitant  that  we  can  find,  when  he  is 
finally  discovered;  and  the  difficulty  of  finding  any- 
one, and  the  wonder  of  such  superb  flowers  at  the 
place  (for  there  are  not  only  the  roses  but  a  garden 
rich  in  other  flowers  of  red  and  orange  and  white  and 
blue),  seem  still  more  astonishing  when  we  find  that 
this  is  a  country  police  station.  We  find,  too,  that 
these  flowers  are  not  only  the  pride  of  the  police  but 
of  the  entire  countryside,  and  the  solitary  policeman 
whom  we  have  found  explains  that  the  delicate  La 
Marque  vine,  which  is  many  years  old  and  has  a  stem 
that  is  thick  at  the  ground,  has  always  been  pruned 
in  the  summer  and  that  its  roots  are  protected  by 
coming  from  under  the  house,  for  thus  they  resist  the 
winter  cold. 

But  there  really  cannot  be  real  cold  here,  for  we 
see  many  hedges  planted  on  top  of  narrow  earth- 


112 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

walls,  which  quite  evidently  are  never  heaved  by  the 
frost. 

We  swing  a  little  away  from  the  sea  and  we  pass 
little  old  women  forever  sunning  themselves  at  little 
cottage  doors  beside  scarlet  poppies.  And  we  most 
unexpectedly  see  a  pretty  nun,  clearly  out  of  some 
medieval  convent! — but  she  shrieks  quite  a  pretty 
little  modern  shriek  and  hurriedly  crosses  herself  and 
runs  to  one  side  as  she  hears  the  honk.  And  we  run 
through  a  constantly  rolling  bit  of  country ;  and  little 
and  bridgeless  brooks  go  lilting  across  the  road,  and 
ever-gathering  moors  are  more  and  more  rising  in 
great  sweeps.  We  pass  the  ever-recurrent  tramp  with 
a  woman,  and  the  ever-recurrent  itinerant  show,  and 
the  ever-recurrent  van  with  its  traveling  family — how 
strange  a  life,  especially  for  the  children,  always  to 
travel  and  never  to  get  to  the  end! 

There  are  more  deep  green  hedges  on  top  of  multi- 
colored stone-and-earth  walls,  and  on  these  walls  are 
also  great  quantities  of  little  white  flowers.  And  we 
make  a  turn  that  is  particularly  sharp  even  for  Eng- 
land, frequent  though  hidden  and  dangerous  turns 
are  over  there,  and  go  down  a  steep  hill  into  Porlock, 
a  village  set  in  a  bight  among  the  mountains,  a  place 
which  strikes  you  as  the  sign  and  symbol  of  livable 
loveliness,  with  roses,  thatch,  quaint  windows  and 
casements,  and  little  noses  of  thatch  at  the  ends  of  the 
ridgepoles,  and  with  each  house  prettier  than  its 
neighbor.  Surely,  one  may  suggest  that  to  live  in 
this  delightful  place  would  be  to  take  time  by  the 
Porlock. 

Then  up  an  interminable  hill,  by  a  private  toll  road, 
to  escape  a  grade  almost  impossible:  and  if  the  Eng- 
lish admit  a  road  to  be  steep  the  motorist  had  better 
pay  attention!  For  a  time  the  road  goes  through 
dense  woods  of  Druid-like,  gray-mossed  trees  and 
sohd  thickets  of  small  oaks  and  of  larger  holly  trees  of 


SOMERSET  AND  DEVON 113 

extremely  dark  green ;  such  a  thicket,  this,  as  it  would 
not  be  humanly  possible  to  walk  through.  The  road 
mounts  above  these  dense  woods  and  goes  on  and  on 
ever  higher  and  higher  and  higher  round  the  shoulder 
of  the  mountainside ;  by  far  the  longest  climb  that  our 
motor  has  made. 

It  is  really  an  unforgivably  long  hill,  the  builders 
having  evidently  seen  the  distant  top  and  determined 
to  go  right  over  it ;  though,  really,  it  is  a  well-graded 
road  and  in  no  place  too  steep. 

We  saw  far  below  us,  as  we  began  the  ascent,  a 
motor  aiming  for  the  hill  that  we  had  avoided  and  we 
almost  envied  the  other  people  except  that  we  were 
getting  magnificent  views;  but  after  a  while  we  saw 
that  the  motor  had  turned  back,  balked,  and  it  fol- 
lowed us  up  our  long  grade  after  all.  And  such  a 
succession  of  changing  views  as  that  road  with  its 
twists  and  turns  presents ! — ^views  of  the  brilliant  sea 
in  splendid  gleaming  sweeps,  of  cliffs  and  sand,  of 
heights  thick-covered  with  trees  or  rich  in  bracken 
and  in  foxglove  in  bloom,  while,  lining  the  road  close 
beside  us,  are  myriad  bluebells  and  yellow-flowering 
whin  bushes.  The  opposite  side  of  the  Bristol  Chan- 
nel, fifteen  miles  or  so  away,  shows  as  a  white  line, 
long  and  faint. 

In  a  little  cleft  below  we  saw  a  tiny  nestle  of  cot- 
tages with  thatched  roofs  mustard-colored  with  moss ; 
and  pheasants  were  flitting  across  the  road ;  and  at  the 
summit  we  looked  off  at  the  blue  sea  and  the  blue 
sky  and  could  scarcely  tell  where  one  merged  into  the 
other.  And  the  air  was  of  unimaginable  fineness. 
And  we  halted  there  for  a  little  to  gain  a  fuller  and 
deeper  impression  of  the  wonder  and  the  beauty  of 
it  all. 

From  a  great  high  level  at  the  summit  a  gently- 
rolling  road  led  us  unexpectedly  away  from  the  sea 
for  a  space  and  into  an  immense  expanse  of  moorland; 


114 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

all  at  once  we  get  a  sweep  of  Exmoor,  magnificent  in 
impressiveness  and  in  immensity  of  effect;  stupen- 
dous, bare,  bleak,  even  monstrous  is  the  roll  of  the 
awe-inspiring  moors. 

The  road  is  lined  with  stone  walls  that  bulk  thick 
and  high  from  the  gathered  earth  and  shrubs  and 
grass  of  centuries,  for  these  are  very  old  walls,  and 
these  are  very  steep  hills,  the  roads  being  made  for 
the  days  of  pack-saddles  and  for  Exmoor  ponies  that 
start  up  steepnesses  on  a  gallop. 

It  is  on  this  high  lonely  land  that  we  leave  Somer- 
set and  enter  Devon.  We  have  but  a  brief  experi- 
ence of  this  vastly  undulating  desolateness,  and  we 
know  that  somewhere  in  the  heart  of  that  high  deso- 
lateness is  the  Doone  valley,  the  home  of  Lorna 
Doone;  and  then  we  descend  to  little  Lynmouth. 
The  final  descent  into  that  place  is  down  a  narrow 
cut,  remarkably  steep,  and  it  was  in  bad  condi- 
tion through  being  wet  and  slimy  from  a  rain 
that  had  not  dried.  For  some  reason  quite  a  num- 
ber of  vehicles  had  been  stalled  in  a  line  at  the 
top  of  this  drop  and  when  the  line  started  we  all 
came  down  into  Lynmouth  one  after  another  with 
great  swiftness  in  a  slipping  and  dropping  effect. 
Immediately  behind  us  was  an  enormous  forty-pas- 
senger motor  excursion  'bus,  painted  scarlet,  whose 
passengers  got  out  in  fright  and  walked.  With  us  it 
was  a  matter  of  mild  speculation  what  would  happen 
if  that  mighty  scarlet  engine  of  destruction  should 
take  a  notion  to  go  faster  than  we,  in  that  slit  of  a 
pass! 

It  is  a  curious  thing  about  motor  guide-books  in 
England,  that  although  they  carefully  point  out 
warnings  of  grades  that  are  one  in  ten  or  so,  they 
quite  omit  any  mention  whatever  of  what  seem  like 
one  in  five!  And  after  all,  nothing  did  happen  to 
any  of  the  vehicles,  although  that  drop  suggested  a 


SOMERSET  AND  DEVON 115 

ride  on  a  roller-coaster  or  "  rapid  the  descent  to 
Avernus." 

Lynmouth  is  a  wonderfully  pretty  and  romantically 
set  town,  with  mountains  closely  hemming  it  in  and 
the  broad  sea  stretching  away  immediately  in  front, 
and  a  delightfully  wild  mountain  stream,  in  rocky 
and  unspoiled  condition,  dashing  right  through  the 
place.  It  is  thick  with  little  hotels  and  tea-rooms  and 
everything  is  nestled  in  flowers,  and  all  is  fresh  and 
fair  in  a  way  characteristic  of  Devon.  At  the  end 
of  this  roadway,  by  the  ocean  edge,  on  a  picturesque 
old  stone  pier,  is  a  little  lighthouse  on  which  is  an  old 
cresset — an  open-work  iron  basket,  for  beacon  fires. 

How  to  get  out  of  Lynmouth  was  a  proposition, 
for  there  was  no  low  road  out  of  the  place  and  in 
either  one  direction  or  another  one  must  climb,  but  we 
were  told  by  local  authorities,  as  a  happy  solution,  to 
take  a  funicular  railway  which  had  been  built,  for 
motors,  to  meet  this  very  difficulty.  But  perhaps  we 
really  should  have  followed  a  road  up  the  stream  for 
a  distance  to  where  there  was  a  new-built  road  with 
a  grade  not  quite  impossibly  steep,  instead  of  taking 
the  funicular  as  we  did,  for  the  platform  to  hold  the 
car  was,  with  a  carelessness  of  construction  and  opera- 
tion that  would  not  be  permitted  in  countries  where 
personal  rights  are  better  safeguarded  (and  this  is 
said  in  all  seriousness),  operated  with  no  proper  pre- 
caution against  the  slipping  back  of  the  car,  which 
would  really  have  been  an  unpleasant  matter,  for  it 
would  have  meant  a  descent  of  several  hundred  feet 
to  the  rocks  and  the  sea;  and  at  the  top  they  were 
quite  unable  to  bring  the  level  of  the  platform  flush 
with  the  level  of  the  landing-stage,  thus  making  a 
particularly  dangerous  condition.  It  required  four 
men  and  the  power  of  the  engine  to  lift  the  car  over 
at  the  top  of  the  abyss — and  we  paid  half  a  sovereign 
for  the  experience! 


116 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

But  we  were  now  in  perched  Lynton,  with  its 
perched  hotels;  one  of  which  gave  us  an  attractive 
and  attracting  sight  with  a  fine  American  flag  flying 
over  its  high-set  tea-garden,  on  the  steep  mountain- 
side; and  we  left  by  an  exceedingly  twisting  and 
agreeable  road,  and  in  the  course  of  a  few  miles  sud- 
denly found  the  road  almost  slipping  away  from 
under  us  as  we  went  down  into  a  village ;  and  the  worst 
of  this  road  was  that  as  we  approached  the  steeper 
part  of  the  declivity,  at  the  bottom,  we  had  to  dodge 
in  and  out  in  the  narrow  road  among  little  cottages 
built  to  the  very  road's  edge,  all  this  forming  a  steep, 
deep,  tangled  little  place  called  Parracombe.  The 
chief  industry  or  at  least  the  principal  occupation  of 
the  men  of  Parracombe  seems  to  be  to  stand  oafishly 
and  watch  in  agreeable  anticipation  for  some  car  to 
come  disastrously  down  their  hill. 

It  looked  as  difficult  to  get  out  of  Parracombe  as  to 
get  out  of  Lynmouth  for  the  road  led  up  with  aston- 
ishing steepness,  but  fortunately  we  had  been  told, 
some  miles  back,  how  to  avoid  this,  by  turning  into  a 
lane  at  the  foot  of  a  hill  to  the  right,  past  the  Fox 
and  Geese  Inn  and  away  from  the  men  watching  for 
disaster,  and  afterwards  taking  the  first  turn  back 
to  the  left,  to  the  main  road. 

But  although  we  speak  critically  now  and  then  of 
the  steepness  and  curves  and  narrowness  of  English 
roads,  we  cannot  too  strongly  say  that  we  do  not  in 
the  slightest  degree  regret  having  gone  over  even 
the  most  difficult,  for  with  care  and  good  fortune 
nothing  happened  to  us  even  on  these  steep  roads  of 
Devon;  at  the  same  time,  it  is  undeniable  that  many 
of  the  English  roads  must  be  seriously  attended  to 
before  the  time  that  motor  cars  become  as  much  a 
feature  of  the  roads  as  in  America;  but  we  enjoyed 
our  journeyings  so  infinitely  that  we  cannot  regret 
having  followed  our  course  nor  could  we  think  of 


SOMERSET  AND  DEVON  117 

advising  others  not  to  do  so.  Quite  probably,  too, 
the  absolute  unexpectedness  of  the  ascents  and  drops 
and  bad  curves  made  them  appreciably  worse  than 
they  would  have  appeared  if  we  had  known  of  them. 
But,  as  we  have  already  remarked,  the  motor-maps 
and  guides  are  strangely  silent  as  to  things  of  danger, 
although  places  that  are  not  in  the  least  difficult  are 
formally  spoken  of. 

We  spent  the  night  at  Combe  Martin,  one  of  those 
old  English  towns  with  an  inimitably  long-drawn-out 
single  street.  It  really  seemed  as  if  we  should  never 
come  to  our  inn,  but  we  came  to  it  at  last  and,  asking 
if  there  were  a  garage,  the  answer  was:  "Yes,  sir. 
We  put  it  in  the  town-hall.  Yes,  sir,  thank  you;  " 
that  eternal  and  meaningless  "  Thank  you,"  with 
its  rising  inflection,  following  even  such  an  amusing 
statement  as  this ;  but  it  was  meant  as  very  literal  and 
not  amusing,  for  the  car  was  really  locked  up  for  the 
night  in  the  basement  of  the  town-hall. 

With  the  morning  we  started  for  Ilfracombe,  along 
a  cliff  road,  through  superbness  of  heights  and  depths, 
and  we  found  that  with  all  the  grandeur  and  stu- 
pendousness,  there  was  also  the  wonder  of  rich  green- 
ery, close  to  the  very  ocean  though  it  is.  Enormous 
ferns  line  the  road.  The  hedges  are  of  deep  green 
and  mostly  of  beech  and  holly  stunted  by  many  years 
of  hacking  and  clipping,  and  grow  upon  stone  walls 
covered  with  earth  and  thick  wdth  grass  and  mosses. 
Numberless  rhododendrons  in  bloom  overhang  the 
road;  they  tell  you  that  a  bit  of  rhododendron  stuck 
into  the  ground  will  grow  as  a  bush!  And  oaks  and 
pines  and  firs  and  beeches  thickly  border  the  way. 
Often  the  hedges  are  so  high  as  to  shut  off  the  ocean, 
and  the  next  moment  they  are  lower,  and  perhaps 
you  will  see  rocky  coves,  with  fishing-boats,  far  below, 
or  a  schooner  with  sails  all  set,  sailing  close  inshore. 

It  was  a  morning  of  cool  gray  mist;  white  waves 


118 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

were  softly  breaking  against  the  cliff;  the  fishing- 
boats  had  white  or  ochre  sails;  other  ships  lay  in  the 
dim-seen  distance  and  all  was  a  misty  and  glamorous 
glory ;  we  could  see  the  level  water  of  the  windless  day 
and  the  black  reefs  and  the  cliffs  and  the  mountains, 
and  then  the  swaying  mist  would  softly  shut  them  in. 

Yesterday  was  a  day  of  brilliant  blue  water  and 
blue  sky,  but  to-day  is  a  day  of  soft  gray  water  and 
soft  gray  sky ;  and  the  seagulls  go  flying  and  scream- 
ing around  the  cliffs. 

We  pass  a  little  village  with  vegetable  gardens 
divided  by  little  hedges  that  go  running  up  almost 
perpendicular  hills,  and  a  little  later  the  car  rolls 
into  Ilfracombe,  a  city  of  hotels  and  boarding-houses 
and  tourists'  shops,  beautifully  facing  out  over  rocks 
and  sea. 

It  is  a  modern  place,  a  gentle  peaceful  seaside  re- 
sort; the  English  do  take  their  seaside  so  pleasantly 
and  placidly!  Villas  perch  along  the  edges  of  the 
town,  each  with  its  rosebushes;  and  white-capped 
old  ladies  are  clipping  rosebushes  and  little  old  men 
are  clipping  rosebushes  and  young  women  are  clip- 
ping rosebushes.  Other  people  are  riding  in  great 
motor-charabancs  or  in  funny  bath-chair  baby- 
carriages  drawn  here  by  ponies  instead  of  by  hand  as 
in  Bath  itself.  And  everybody  else  is  just  looking 
out  over  the  sea  and  thinking — or  just  looking  out 
over  the  sea. 


CHAPTER  XII 

CLOVELLY  AND  TINTAGEL 

WE  chose,  out  of  Ilfracombe,  a  fine  cross- 
country road  that  led  us  easily  to  Barn- 
staple, an  ancient  town  that  scarcely  looks 
it,  with  a  very  interesting  sixteen-arched  stone  bridge, 
seven  centuries  old,  which  has  necessarily  been 
widened  with  ironwork.  Barnstaple  is  called  Barum, 
just  as  later  we  are  to  find  Salisbury  called  Sarum — 
each  of  them  an  eminently  respectable  place  to  have 
an  alias! 

Beyond  Barnstaple  it  was  a  pleasant  run,  past 
hedges  blossoming  with  honeysuckle  and  eglantine, 
to  busy  Bideford,  the  busiest  manufacturing  place 
we  saw  in  Devonshire,  and  it  was  a  surprise  to  find 
so  large  and  busy  a  place,  for  we  had  thought  of  it 
only  as  the  town  of  Westward  Ho! 

Past  Bideford  it  was  less  than  a  dozen  miles  to 
Clovelly,  and  we  felt  disappointed  after  the  recent 
magnificent  scenery,  for  the  road  became  rather  ordi- 
nary. We  had  heard  of  Clovelly  as  a  place  of  unusual 
beauty  but  in  its  approach  there  was  no  indication  of 
it.  We  left  the  main  highway  and  motored  along  a 
short  branch-road  with  masses  of  fuchsia  growing 
profusely  over  its  bordering  walls,  and  came  to  a 
place  where  our  motor  car  could  be  left  and  cared  for, 
and  proceeded  on  foot  down  a  steep,  narrow  lane 
with  views  in  front,  across  intervening  greenery,  of 
miles  of  tall-rising  cliffs  with  the  water  breaking  at 
their  feet. 

And  all  at  once  the  scene  changes;  we  turn  a  cor- 

119 


120 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

ner:  we  no  longer  see  cliffs  or  beach  or  water;  in- 
stead we  see  in  front  of  us  a  street,  a  street  so  narrow 
that  you  may  shake  hands  across  it,  a  street  of  cobble- 
stones the  width  of  the  narrow  way  and  of  steep 
stone-paved  descents,  a  street  where  either  side  is  an 
irregular  wavering  indented  line  of  little  houses,  of 
casement  windows,  of  dormered  roofs,  of  diamond 
panes,  of  little  balconies,  of  ships'  masts  for  flag- 
poles. 

This  street  is  Clovelly:  and  it  is  a  fetching  street, 
a  charming  street,  a  street  of  white  and  green,  a  street 
of  the  most  brilliant  white  and  the  most  brilliant 
green:  a  street  of  ancientness,  of  beauty,  of  cleanli- 
ness, even  of  immaculateness. 

The  women  are  all  white-aproned  and  the  men  are 
clad  in  the  blue  jerseys  of  the  sea.  Down  and  down 
we  go.  Probably  no  horse  has  ever  walked  down  this 
street;  certainly  no  vehicle  ever  passed  up  or  down; 
but  there  are  little  skids  which  are  slid  and  dragged 
by  hand  over  the  polished  little  cobbles  and  steps,  and 
there  are  a  few  panniered  donkeys  used  for  burdens 
and  now  and  then  for  some  visitor.  At  the  bottom 
of  the  descent  and  in  sight  of  the  sea  the  street  sweeps 
and  turns  and  turns  again  and  passes  directly  through 
an  old  white  house  and  opens  upon  a  curving  stone 
quay,  shaped  like  a  fish-hook,  and  a  great,  sweeping 
high-cliffed  bay. 

On  the  broad  shingle  beach  a  fleet  of  little  boats 
is  moored  by  long  brown  chains,  waiting  for  the  tide 
to  float  them,  and  other  boats  of  the  village  dot  the 
sea,  and  looking  back  from  the  quay  there  are  tall 
cliffs  of  greenery  and  a  few  white  houses  and  no  sign 
whatever  of  the  wonderful  street  down  which  we  have 
just  come! 

A  friendly,  helpful,  soft-voiced,  happy  folk  are 
these  of  Clovelly.  When  boats  put  out  together  for 
passengers  from  a  visiting  local  steamer,  the  boatman 


Yaxkees  at  Kixg  Arthur's  Casti.e 


The  rocky  approach  to  Tintagel 


CLOVELLY  AND  TINTAGEL 121 

who  gets  but  one  passenger  does  as  well  as  the  man 
who  gets  many,  for  the  money  is  equally  divided; 
when  a  fisherman  is  sick  his  fellow-villagers  divide 
with  him  until  he  is  able  once  more  to  put  to  sea. 

This  very  ancient  village  is  an  excellent  example 
of  good  results  from  a  system  that  must  needs  in  itself 
be  evil.  For  every  particle  of  land  is  owned,  and 
always  has  been  owned,  by  the  lord  of  the  manor;  or 
the  lady  of  the  manor,  as  it  is  at  present,  who  holds 
everyone  in  the  village  in  the  grip  of  a  short  lease 
in  place  of  the  leases  for  three  lives,  of  the  past ;  and 
that  the  present  owner  is  a  beneficent  despot  who 
appreciates  the  value  of  retaining  the  old-time 
charm  and  quaintness  does  not  assure  the  future  of 
Clovelly. 

Vines  cling  to  the  house-fronts.  At  cottage  doors, 
in  cottage  windows,  in  miraculously  tiny  cottage  gar- 
dens there  are  masses  of  geranium  positively  mar- 
velous in  scarlet  bloom,  and  there  are  roses,  there  are 
glorious  peonies  in  a  precious  bit  of  ground  that  is 
but  six  inches  wide,  there  is  the  fair  white  stock, 
sweet-smelling  like  cloves,  there  are  wall-flowers  in 
their  shadings  of  brown  or  yellow,  and  up  a  little  path- 
w^ay  there  are  tree  fuchsias,  thick  with  thousands  of 
blossoms  on  branches  that  are  fifteen  feet  in  length, 
and  all  this  on  that  little  ancient  street  climbing  up 
from  the  sea. 

Clovelly  is  fortunately  not  to  be  reached  by  rail,  so 
only  the  people  get  here  who  really  wish  to  see  it. 
For  them  it  is  easily  reachable,  and  in  mid-season  it 
is  thronged  by  visitors  who  come  by  charabanc  or 
boat  and  for  the  greater  part  stay  but  through  the 
mid- day  hours.  In  early  June  there  are  not  many  vis- 
itors, and  as  evening  came  on  not  a  single  one  was  to 
be  seen,  all  having  gone  to  their  rooms  or  returned 
to  other  towns.  Then  the  village  became  its  natural 
self ;  some  of  the  women  taking  in  their  tiny  tea  signs 


122 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

and  sitting  out  on  their  tiny  little  terraced  balconies 
and  quietly  greeting  neighbors  on  the  opposite  side 
of  the  narrow  way,  and  a  knot  of  blue-jerseyed  men 
gathered  at  a  little  outlook  point  and  looked  quietly 
out  over  the  bay  and  the  shadowy  cliffs  and  the  dis- 
tant light  on  Bideford  bar,  and  at  the  mist  that  was 
slowly  dimming  the  water  and  the  headlands,  even 
though  the  moon  was  rising  over  the  wooded  cliifs. 
And  how  often  the  moon  comes  on  one's  travels  just 
to  add  a  touch  of  magic  to  a  place  of  beauty! 

The  folk  of  Clovelly  are  a  silent  folk,  but  one  old 
sailor  was  moved  to  unwonted  talk  of  his  sea  voy- 
ages, and  especially  of  sailing  as  one  of  a  crew  on  a 
yacht  to  the  Mediterranean.  He  liked  the  towns  at 
the  base  of  the  Italian  cliffs  and  remembered  them  all 
by  name;  but  they  were  not  clean  enough  for  him. 
The  temples  at  Peestum  did  not  greatly  interest  him, 
for  they  had  no  windows  and  the  roofs  were  off! 
Venice  he  liked  least  of  all:  "  There  was  no  proper 
place  to  walk;  I  could  only  walk  around  their  bit  of 
a  square  " :  and  this  from  a  man  of  the  perpendicular 
street  of  Clovelly! 

The  village  grows  strangely  silent.  And  there  are 
distant  footsteps  on  the  cobble-stones  and  distant 
snatches  of  song  and  a  distant  hail,  and  a  sibilant 
murmuring  from  the  mostly  monosyllabic  men — and 
then,  as  old  Pepys  said,  "  and  then  to  bed." 

We  were  awakened  by  the  crying  of  the  seabirds 
that  flew  past  our  windows,  and  then  came  the  clat- 
ter of  the  skids  with  the  morning  bread  and  butter 
and  eggs  and  clotted  cream  for  the  village,  and  then 
the  clattering  feet  of  a  little  donkey  led  by  a  uni- 
formed postman  bringing  the  day's  mail;  and  we 
walked  down  again  to  the  lookout,  and  jackdaws  and 
milk-white  seagulls  and  puffins  were  flying  about  or 
resting  on  the  rocks;  and  fluttering  near  the  shore 
were  the  chaffinch  and  the  jet-black  jackdaw,  and  the 


CLOVELLY  AND  TINTAGEL 123 

linnet  with  its  red  breast  and  the  bright  white  on 
its  wings. 

After  breakfast  at  the  pleasant  little  place  where 
we  had  stayed,  we  were  asked  to  write  in  the  guest- 
book,  and  on  the  previous  page  we  noticed  a  most  de- 
hghtful  appreciation  of  the  house  signed  A.  Conan 
Doyle.  He  spoke  of  the  agreeable  treatment  given 
him  and  said  that  the  hostess  was  one  of  the  few  in 
England  who  could  rise  to  the  height  of  a  seven- 
thirty  breakfast;  and  it  amused  us  to  find  that  the 
hostess  herself  had  no  idea  that  Doctor  Doyle  was 
anything  of  a  celebrity. 

It  is  well  for  Clovelly  that  the  physical  characteris- 
tics of  its  surroundings  make  it  impossible  for  it  to 
expand ;  so  that,  although  it  is  so  many  centuries  old 
— it  is  mentioned  in  Domesday  Book — ^it  is  small  for 
its  age.  A  most  attractive  and  final  impression  of 
the  place,  and  as  unexpected  as  it  is  delightful,  comes 
from  entering  a  private  road  of  the  lady  of  the  manor 
— the  public  are  allowed  to  enter  it — which  skirts  the 
edge  of  the  cliff  above  the  village,  for  there  is  a  glory 
of  trees  in  oak  and  beech  and  ash  that  are  green  to 
their  bases  with  lichen  and  ivy,  and  there  are  shrubs 
and  flowers  and  enormous  fern  and  bracken,  and 
through  the  greenery  there  are  glimpses  of  the  roofs 
far  below,  or  of  the  cliiTs,  or  of  the  sea,  or  of  long 
and  distant  stretches  of  white  sand,  and  ever  the  blue 
sky  merges  into  the  blue  sea  and  the  blue  sea  merges 
into  the  blue  sky  and  all  is  loveliness. 

Leaving  Clovelly  behind,  there  are  miles  and  miles 
of  smiling  desolation,  with  seldom  a  house  to  be  seen, 
a  rolling  country  with  sweeping  views,  and  with  sel- 
dom a  tree,  and  with  hedges  checkering  and  criss- 
crossing in  every  direction ;  and  we  remembered  that 
Mrs.  Browning  somewhere  speaks  of  some  part  of 
England  as  "  tied  up  fast  with  hedges,"  and  it  seems 
as  if  such  a  description  would  here  apply. 


124 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

We  passed  a  party  of  camping  trampers ;  two  fami- 
lies, with  poor  and  ragged  tents  and  the  children  well- 
spoken,  though  in  ragged  clothes.  These  were  not 
begging  trampers,  but  an  industrious  group;  they 
even  had  a  horse,  and  it  was  philosophically  cropping 
the  roadside  grass;  the  elders,  both  men  and  women, 
were  off  on  some  temporary  work,  and  a  pile  of  tent 
pegs  pointed  out  one  of  the  kinds  of  work  done  by 
the  children. 

As  we  went  on  we  noticed  that  the  chaffinch  and 
the  linnet  were  often  seen,  and  one  chaffinch  was  so 
tame  that  it  actually  lighted  upon  the  wind-shield  for 
a  few  moments  as  if  to  give  us  a  friendly  greeting 
into  Cornwall — for  we  wer^  passing  the  Cornwall 
line  and  we  were  bound  for  the  ancient  castle  which 
more  than  any  other  is  connected  with  King  Arthur, 
ancient  Tintagel — and  we  w^ere  going  to  King  Ar- 
thur's castle  in  a  motor  car! 

Stretches  of  illimitable  moor,  bleak  and  brownish 
green  and  bare  of  trees,  seldom  a  solitary  house  in 
sight  for  miles  and  miles,  a  drear  immensity  of  space 
— and  we  barely  noticed  little  old  Stratton  as  we 
passed  swiftly  through  it  and  again  out  into  the 
loneliness,  nor  did  we  pause  for  pretty  Boscastle, 
tucked  down  as  it  is  in  a  great  hollow  and  proud  of 
its  reputation  of  being  the  prettiest  village  in  Corn- 
wall. We  felt  the  drear  immensities  of  that  drear 
coast — for  the  Atlantic  Ocean  was  never  far  away, 
although  out  of  sight  from  the  road — as  a  fit  spot  for 
tremendous  and  lost  history,  and  our  minds  were  full 
of  Tintagel  and  Arthur. 

For  there  can  be  no  doubt  that  Kin^  Arthur  ex- 
isted; the  immemorial  and  unbroken  tradition,  the 
fixed  belief  of  the  people,  the  church  bells  of  sunken 
Lyonesse  still  faintly  ringing,  as  the  dim  old  fancy 
has  it,  underneath  the  Cornish  sea — how  can  even  the 
soberest-minded  doubt!    There  is  no  fixed  and  pro- 


CLOVELLY  AND  TINTAGEL 125 

saic  history  of  King  Arthur,  but  there  is  something 
infinitely  better,  for  there  is  that  at  which  history  aims 
in  vain:  a  tremendous  impression. 

We  had  had  a  rapid  run  of  over  thirty  miles  from 
Clovelly  and  we  had  gone  up  a  great,  long  hill,  and 
high,  high  up  we  came  suddenly  and  unexpectedly 
upon  a  village  which  has  been  given  the  name  of 
Tintagel;  and  we  felt  the  intensest  shock  of  disap- 
pointment. For  it  is  a  village  which,  although  it  has 
a  few  old-time  houses,  is  a  modern  and  unattractive 
place  for  summer  trippers,  and  on  a  treeless  cliff 
nearby  is  a  big  modern  hotel.  We  noticed  signs  of 
"  Land  for  Sale,"  one  of  the  few  places  in  England 
where  we  have  seen  any  such  signs,  and  this  was  ap- 
parently the  explanation  of  the  unattractive  modern 
homes,  and  we  realized  again  that  there  are  strong 
advantages,  from  a  picturesque  standpoint,  in  the 
system  by  which  land  is  held  by  great  proprietors, 
whatever  criticisms  may  fairly  be  made  from  other 
standpoints. 

But  in  a  few  minutes  the  village  and  the  hotel  are 
forgotten  and  the  impressions  of  tremendousness  re- 
turn even  intenser  and  stronger  than  before,  for  we 
have  left  the  car  and  gone  down  a  winding  path  and 
have  come  to  where  the  mighty  Atlantic  stretches  off 
into  dim  distances  and  where  we  mount  upward  in 
our  approach  to  the  castle  of  Tintagel  and  are  faced 
by  a  cliff  stupendously  black  and  stern. 

As  we  cross  a  narrow  causeway  a  tremendous  wind 
blows  through  the  narrow  gap  and  lifts  the  seabirds 
as  they  try  to  dive,  and  there  is  a  long  line  of  rocky 
cliffs  on  either  side  and  on  either  side  of  us  the  break- 
ers are  dashing  in  in  angry  white.  We  go  up  and 
up  steps  that  are  chopped  out  of  the  solid  stone  and 
we  reach  an  old  wooden  door  in  the  ancient  gateway 
of  the  castle  and  we  unlock  the  door  and  enter  and 
lock  ourselves  inside — we  have  been  given  the  key  by 


126 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIlSr 

the  custodian,  who,  with  a  fine  sense  of  the  fitness  of 
things,  lives  in  a  little  house  quite  out  of  sight,  back 
toward  the  village — and  we  feel  to  the  full  the  splen- 
did impressiveness  of  it  all. 

Few  fragments  of  the  castle  remain,  but  they  are 
enough  to  show  what  it  must  have  been  in  ancient 
days,  standing  there  on  its  ocean-girdled  promontory 
overhanging  the  sea.  It  is  all  glorious  and  terrible, 
and  thoughts  come  thronging  of  Arthur  the  King 
and  of  the  Knights  of  the  Table  Round,  and  we  feel 
a  vivid  sense  of  the  long-past  time.  How  lonely  and 
impressive  it  all  seems,  here  above  the  roaring  ocean, 
and  how  mighty  and  impregnable  must  it  all  have 
been ! — and  yet  all  has  vanished  as  a  tale  that  is  told ; 
a  tale  that  is  only  mistily  told — and  we  walk  softly 
over  ground  that  is  all  glowing  with  the  flowering 
seapink. 

Tintagel  had  been  our  ultimate  western  aim,  and  so 
here  we  turned  our  back  to  the  setting  sun  and  swung 
to  the  eastward. 


CHAPTER  XIII 

EASTWARD   HO! 

AS  we  left  Tintagel  we  ran  into  great  moors, 
stem,  dour,  solemn,  in  sweeps  of  lonely  gran- 
■  deur,  and  they  begin  to  be  depressive  and  they 
make  for  sadness;  and  then,  suddenly,  we  are  in  a 
lush  green  England  again,  with  trees  and  vines  and 
bushes  and  flowers  and  grass;  a  wonderful  and  al- 
most instantaneous  change  into  a  rich  and  beautiful 
country.  We  go  on  through  Launceston,  a  pleasant 
and  modern-looking  place  on  a  hillside,  with  a  gloomy 
old  castle  that  has  looked  down  frowningly  upon  it 
since  Norman  days;  and  we  pass  through  the  town 
and  go  out  through  an  ancient  gateway  that  spans  the 
public  street — a  felicitous  gateway,  felicitously  used 
— and  with  little  windows,  diamond-paned,  in  the 
rooms  above  the  gate. 

Not  far  beyond  Launceston  we  were  perilously  near 
a  tragedy.  We  were  coasting  slowly  down  a  road 
cut  straight  and  narrow  between  close-bordering 
stone  walls,  and  it  was  fortunate  that  the  power  was 
shut  off  and  the  car  under  quiet  control,  for  a  two- 
wheeled  cart  was  coming  up  the  hill  toward  us  with 
a  woman  and  a  baby  and  two  girls,  and  in  an  instant, 
just  as  it  was  passing  us  and  without  the  slightest 
warning,  the  horse,  which  until  then  had  given  not 
the  slightest  indication  of  fright,  suddenly  whirled 
and  backed  the  cart  directly  in  front  of  our  wheels, 
closing  the  entire  road.  For  a  moment  it  seemed  as 
if  collision  was  inevitable  and  it  would  have  been  seri- 
ous indeed  to  overturn  a  cart  with  such  a  load,  but 

127 


128 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

fortunately  the  ear  was  stopped,  although  within  an 
inch  of  collision,  and  at  the  same  time  one  of  us 
jumped  out  and  caught  the  horse  by  the  bridle,  and  all 
was  safe,  and  the  horse  was  led  up  the  hill  and  the 
party  went  on  their  way.  But  it  was  a  proof,  had  any 
proof  been  needed,  that  vigilance  can  never  be 
relaxed. 

We  went  motoring  through  an  unusually  beautiful 
stretch  of  countryside,  and  the  road  had  notably 
broadened,  and  nearing  Okehampton  veritable  moun- 
tains of  moorland  came  in  sight,  lofty  and  dreary. 

Okehampton  itself  did  not  detain  us,  and  from  that 
place  to  Exeter  we  made  a  detour,  as  we  were  warned 
of  a  torn-up  road ;  and,  as  it  turned  out,  we  were  glad 
of  this  detour,  for  it  took  us  through  a  charming 
country  and  into  a  little  village,  Sampford  Courtney, 
in  the  middle  of  which  we  forded  a  httle  stream  that 
rambled  across  the  road;  and  there  were  white  cot- 
tages and  dark  thatched  roofs  and  green  hedges  and 
red  roses  and  gray  walls  and  brown  roads  and  white 
and  pink  flowers,  and  baby  yellow  ducks  on  the  green 
water  with  a  mothering  black  hen  a-flutter  with 
anxiety  and  anxiously  calling  out  little  warning 
calls;  and  in  this  little  village  we  had  one  of  those 
unexpectedly  pleasant  experiences  which  may  hap- 
pen at  any  time  in  England,  for  we  stopped  to  ask 
a  question  at  a  little  cottage  and  we  were  asked  to 
come  in,  and  there  was  a  yellow  cat  lying  on  the 
stone  floor  near  the  fireplace,  which  was  the  cook- 
stove  of  the  house,  and  in  the  little  front  room  was 
an  ancient  oak  dresser  quite  full  of  interesting  old 
blue-and-white  china  and  luster  ware,  and  the  dresser 
itself  belonged  to  the  old  grandfather  of  eighty-two, 
who  mumbled  that  it  was  very  old  when  he  was  a  boy. 
The  cottage  had  such  astonishingly  thick  walls  of 
plaster-covered  clay  mixed  with  straw  as  to  make  the 
rooms  almost  impossibly  tiny.     It  was,  in  all,  not 


Cheddar  cows  by  the  waterside 


MUDWALLED    COTTAGES   OF    SaMPFORD   CoURTNEY 


The  old  guildhall  of  Exeter 


Children  of  gypsy-like  caravaners 


EASTWARD  HO  ! 129 

much  more  than  a  glimpse  into  a  cottager's  home,  but 
it  left  such  a  pleasant  impression ! 

As  we  went  on  we  noticed  that  there  were  other 
cottages  built  of  clay  and  straw.  And  the  road  led 
narrowing  between  tall  banks,  and  through  villages, 
with  lofty  stretches  of  Dartmoor  from  time  to  time 
in  towering  heights  on  our  right;  and  there  were 
many  thatched  cottages,  and  even  the  hay-ricks  were 
thatched,  and  the  hedges  were  aglow  with  campions 
or  yellow  with  buttercups,  and  there  were  pleasant 
white  cottages  with  trellised  arches  of  roses  over  their 
doors  and  with  fruit  trees  and  trained  flowers  against 
the  cottage  walls.  There  were  long  lines  of  big  beech- 
trees  growing  on  the  very  tops  of  the  stone-and-earth 
walls,  and  views  alternately  wide  and  restricted,  and 
ever  and  anon  there  would  again  come  wide-sweeping 
views  of  the  miles  of  distant  purple  moorland. 

We  passed  tandem  teams  with  two  or  three  or  even 
four  horses,  we  passed  sleek  brown  cattle  lying  in  the 
midst  of  a  great  field  of  yellow  buttercups,  we  passed 
gardens  rich  with  enormous  strawberries,  we  passed 
through  gloomy  roads  canyoned  with  huge  stone 
walls,  and  right  into  a  village  of  vividest  white, 
Crediton,  a  little  place  with  an  interesting  town  cross 
and  a  stately  old  church.  But  we  did  not  go  into  the 
church,  for  one  early  learns  that  to  go  into  every  in- 
teresting old  church  in  England  would  demand  life- 
times. We  crossed  a  brimming  river — ^how  one  comes 
to  realize  that  in  those  delightful  words  of  Tennyson, 
"  brimming  river,"  he  described  a  frequently  recur- 
rent feature  of  the  finest  of  English  landscapes! — 
and  then  we  are  in  Exeter. 

Few  of  all  the  towns  or  cities  of  England  are  so 
satisfactory,  so  attractive,  so  agreeable  as  Exeter.  It 
is  not  only  that  it  is  old  and  that  it  was  old  even  so 
long  ago  as  when  the  mother  of  King  Harold  escaped 
through  a  town  gate  (still  partially  preserved  even  in 


130 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

this  twentieth  century)  when  William  the  Conqueror 
entered  the  place,  for  other  cities  of  England  are  also 
old,  but  that  the  city  is  of  an  individual  attractiveness, 
largely  owing,  apparently,  to  the  fine  type  of  people 
who  make  up  its  population — at  least  this  was  the  im- 
pression that  we  came  to  feel  there.  The  men  are 
alert  and  the  women  are  smartly  dressed  and  there 
is  a  general  air  of  exquisite,  quiet  living  in  the  resi- 
dential streets  and  the  "  circuses."  It  is  a  fair  city 
— ^indeed,  it  is  a  city  of  savoir  faire. 

Exeter  is  a  place  of  fine  modernity,  but  at  the  same 
time  it  keeps  closely  in  touch  with  the  past;  for  ex- 
ample, one  of  the  citizens  still  receives  two  pennies 
a  year  for  permitting  a  beam  to  rest  in  his  wall  just 
because  that  beam  has  paid  two  pennies  a  year  for 
some  six  centuries.  The  easy  talk  of  the  people  in 
general  is  of  some  King  This  or  Queen  That  of  the 
past.  When,  many  years  ago,  the  then  King  wrote — 
Edward  the  First  or  Third  or  something — directing 
that  the  local  guilds  give  a  certain  citizen  a  permit  to 
do  business  in  the  city  without  paying  a  big  fee,  for 
the  man  was  rich  and  powerful  and  had  interested  the 
King  in  his  behalf,  the  guilds  refused  and  successfully 
persisted  in  their  refusal :  and  the  people  are  as  proud 
of  the  achievement  as  if  it  were  only  of  yesterday. 

There  is  a  beautiful  grayish-black  cathedral  in 
Exeter  and  it  is  set  a  few  feet  below  the  level  of  a 
broad,  open  space  adjoining  the  main  part  of  the 
city  and  just  off  at  one  side  from  it.  It  is  curiously 
buttressed  in  such  a  way  that  one  may  walk  along 
outside  beneath  the  buttresses,  and  there  is  a  splendid 
dignity  about  two  old  towers  of  which  the  city  feels 
mildly  proud,  for  one  is  at  each  end  of  the  transept, 
and  this  is  the  only  cathedral  in  England  with  such 
a  feature. 

In  the  interior  of  the  cathedral  there  is  a  curiously 
interesting  minstrels'  gallery,  with  figures  of  angels 


EASTWARD  HO ! 131 

playing  on  cittern  and  clarion,  psaltery  and  bag- 
pipe, sackbut  and  timbrel  and  cymbals.  But  we  were 
still  more  interested  in  an  inscription  under  a  great 
stained-glass  window  which  said  that  it  was  affection- 
ately "  dedicated  to  the  memory  of  the  men  of  Devon 
who  died  in  the  service  of  their  country  during  the 
war  in  South  Africa,  1899-1902,"  and  we  were 
equally  interested  in  another  inscription  to  the  men 
of  the  region  who  died  in  India,  and  we  were  inter- 
ested in  the  battle-flags  that  are  preserved  there. 
Soldiers  are  buried  in  this  cathedral  who  have  fought 
in  every  war  from  the  Conquest  down  to  the  present 
time,  and  there  will  undoubtedly  be  some  great  and 
solemn  memorial  to  the  men  who  have  died  in  the  lat- 
est war  of  all  in  France. 

Close  beside  an  ancient  stone  effigy  there  ticks,  in 
plain  sight,  the  great  pendulum  of  the  cathedral  clock, 
marking  the  ticking  off  of  the  centuries  of  inexorable 
time. 

A  cathedral,  this,  with  a  general  effect  of  sweet 
and  agreeable  intimacy;  you  love  it,  not  that  it  is  so 
grand  as  some,  not  that  it  is  so  large  as  some,  but  that 
it  is  altogether  fine  and  of  a  delightful  mellowness — 
as  indeed  the  entire  town  is. 

In  Exeter  we  noticed  fine  evidences  of  great  and 
justifiable  civic  pride,  and,  as  a  perfect  indication  of 
this,  there  is  preserved  in  High  Street,  in  the  very  cen- 
ter of  the  city,  an  ancient  guild-hall,  a  really  beautiful 
building,  projecting  over  the  sidewalk  and  resting  on 
fine  stone  pillars  that  rise  from  the  curb.  We  en- 
tered by  a  remarkable  Renaissance  door,  a  positively 
adorable  door,  and  the  interior  of  the  building  was 
shown  to  us  by  a  man  deliciously  full  of  the  feeling 
of  Exeter.  First,  there  is  the  almost  chapel-like  guild- 
room,  paneled,  and  with  a  groined  roof;  but  even 
more  interesting  than  the  guild-room  is  the  mayor's 
chamber  over  the  sidewalk,  furnished  with  admirable 


132 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

old  furniture  of  various  periods,  not  as  a  museum, 
but  as  a  room  for  every-day  use ;  it  is  the  mayor's  own 
parlor  and  it  is  finely  paneled  with  oak,  and  there 
are  interesting  paintings  on  the  wall,  including  the 
portrait  of  Princess  Henrietta,  the  daughter  of 
Charles  the  First,  who  was  born  in  Exeter  in  the 
troublous  times  of  1644. 

The  infamous  Jeffreys  is  remembered  here  with 
present-day  hatred,  for  at  one  crossroads  just  out- 
side of  the  town  he  had  eighty-four  men  of  Exeter 
and  its  neighborhood  hanged  in  one  week.  "  It  was 
a  bad  job,"  said  a  citizen,  with  concern  and  heavy 
anger,  as  if  it  were  all  of  last  week.  But  there  was 
at  least  one  period  when  there  was  no  hanging  in 
Exeter,  for  they  still  tell  that,  four  or  five  hundred 
years  ago,  the  guild-hall  needed  a  new  roof  and  of  how 
the  city  built  a  beautiful  one  by  fining,  for  one  year, 
every  person  convicted  of  any  crime,  instead  of  hang- 
ing anybody — this  being  back  in  the  delightful  old 
days  when  England  hanged  for  pretty  nearly  every 
offense,  little  or  big. 

Within  the  town  there  is  a  beautiful  park,  with  an 
exquisite  lawn  and  huge  trees,  and  here  the  beautiful 
and  fragmentary  remains  of  old  Rougemont  Castle 
are  hidden  among  masses  of  ivy;  and  this  brought 
to  mind  Shakespeare's  reference  to  Exeter,  showing 
as  it  does  that  Exeter  has  always  been  a  pleasant 
city  to  visit  and  that  the  mayor  has  always  been 
a  man  of  importance;  and  also  it  forever  fixes 
Rougemont  Castle  in  the  memory;  for  Richard  the 
Third  is  made  to  say: 

When  last  I  was  at  Exeter, 

The  Mayor  in  courtesy  show'd  me  the  castle, 

And  call'd  it  Rougemont." 

As  we  were  about  ready  to  leave  Exeter  we  saw 
people  eagerly  pushing  into  a  door  in  an  eager,  jos- 


EASTWARD  HO  ! 133 

tling  rush,  and  as  it  was  under  the  sign  "  Restau- 
rant "  we  joined  the  rush,  and  found  the  most  promi- 
nent sign  inside  to  be  "  American  Iced  Drinks."  It 
was  a  positively  delightful  restaurant  and  they  gave 
us  coffee  deliciously  American  made  and,  better  than 
all,  huge,  delicious  strawberries  of  the  countryside, 
served  with  delicious  Devon  cream;  clotted  cream, 
they  call  it,  although  it  is  not  really  clotted  at  all, 
but  delightfully  smooth;  and  it  is  only  fair,  in  jus- 
tice to  Devonshire,  to  say  that  we  had  been  intermit- 
tently feasting  on  strawberries  almost,  if  not  quite  as 
good,  as  these,  and  upon  Devon  cream,  ever  since  en- 
tering the  county;  and  we  left  the  cream-pots  of 
Devon  with  regret. 

We  swung  out  of  Exeter,  detouring  for  Honiton 
under  arcaded  trees,  past  little  carts,  vari-colored, 
remindful  of  the  little  carts  of  Sicily,  past  dark  woods 
distantly  massed,  past  ducks  waddling  in  yellow  fuzz 
across  the  road,  past  goose  girls  driving  their  flocks 
homeward — only  they  were  ducks  and  not  geese,  but 
one  really  cannot  say  "  duckgirl,"  although,  such  be- 
ing among  the  oddities  of  language,  there  might  be 
reference  to  one  as  "  ducky  ";  and  here  the  girls  cer- 
tainly added  a  picturesque  touch. 

We  met  helmeted  and  goggled  motorcyclists,  heads 
low  down,  coats  inflated,  giving  the  impression  of 
coming  charging  at  us  like  sea-divers,  we  noticed 
hedge  clippings  frugally  tied  up  in  bundles  to  be 
carried  to  cottages  as  fuel,  we  noticed  two  men  stand- 
ing on  a  big,  specially-made  platform  to  saw  huge 
logs  longitudinally,  such  slow  hand-work  methods 
being  proudly  deemed  conservative  over  here;  and 
thus  into  the  broad  street  of  little  Honiton.  Some- 
thing in  its  appearance  quite  astonished  us  and  in  a 
moment  we  noticed  what  it  was :  it  was  the  first  Eng- 
lish town  we  had  seen,  exclusive  of  cities,  without 
greenery,  and  even  the  streets  of  the  cities  had  some- 


134 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

how  managed  to  give  a  greener  effect  than  this.  It  is 
a  town  of  yellow  bareness. 

Down  the  main  street  a  tiny  donkey  was  drawing 
a  tiny  cart  in  which,  high-perched,  sat  a  grizzled, 
white-whiskered  old  farmer  in  bright  blue  coat  and 
yellow  corduroys ;  indeed,  we  came  to  notice  that  yel- 
low corduroys  are  somewhat  of  a  favorite  hereabouts. 
A  few  red-coated  soldiers  brightened  the  sallow  town, 
giving  touches  of  color,  but  not  a  glare,  and  a  little 
band  of  street  musicians  were  playing  oddly  excellent 
music  with  piccolos  and  banjo.  If  one  were  giving 
a  formal  description  of  this  place,  the  beginning 
would  be  not  with  the  yellow  coloring  and  the  donkey 
carts  and  the  soldiers,  which  are  the  things  that 
mainly  struck  us,  but  with  the  making  of  Honiton 
lace;  and  this  is  really  a  very  interesting  matter,  for 
it  is  the  only  English-made  bobbin-lace;  the  manu- 
facture of  it  was  established  here  perhaps  some  two 
and  a  half  centuries  ago  by  refugees  from  Holland, 
and  it  is  still  being  made  in  the  old-fashioned  way; 
and  of  course  there  are  little  places  to  buy  it  and  little 
upstairs  rooms  where  you  will  be  shown  little  old 
women  doing  miracles  with  fingers  jingling  bobbins, 
over  the  pins  on  their  pillows. 

We  went  on  through  a  beautiful  country  and  came 
to  Axminster,  a  famous  name  in  the  making  of  car- 
pets, although  they  have  not  been  made  here,  the 
people  will  tell  you,  for  the  last  hundred  years,  as 
the  secret  died  with  the  original  discoverer  of  the 
Axminster  method.  They  point  out  the  old  stone 
building  where  he  lived  and  worked;  and  the  reflec- 
tion comes  that,  although  a  man  of  personality  may 
not  always  be  able  to  hand  down  his  own  name  to 
posterity,  he  may  be  able  to  hand  down  that  of  his 
town,  as  has  this  carpet-maker,  and  that  the  high- 
est aim  of  all  may  not  be  personal  fame. 

English  towns  feel  a  great  local  pride  in  their  local 


EASTWARD  HO ! 135 

mottoes;  a  point  which  is  seldom  of  interest  to  vis- 
itors, though  after  we  had  left  Axminster  we  won- 
dered that  we  could  have  done  so  without  thinking 
to  inquire  what  its  particular  motto  was ;  for  at  least, 
as  one  of  us  suggested,  the  Axminsterites  would  not 
care  to  have  such  a  motto  as  that  proud  one  of  our 
own  Pine  Tree  flag,  "  Don't  tread  on  me." 

None  of  us  could  quite  say  why,  but  we  all  felt 
vaguely  stirred  by  feeling  that  we  were  approaching 
that  great  stretch  of  southern  England  named,  with- 
out any  definite  boundaries,  the  South  Downs:  we 
all  thought  at  first  that  we  knew  all  about  the  South 
Downs  and  that  they  somehow  represented  English 
history  and  greatness,  but  when  we  tried  a  mutual 
analysis  we  discovered  that  "  Southdown  mutton  " 
marked  the  extent  of  our  definite  ideas. 

But  soon  there  was  something  that  did  definitely 
thrill  us,  for  as  we  motored  along  high-lying  roads 
of  rich  and  lovely  views  alternately  to  right  and  left, 
we  now  and  then  caught  distant  and  sparkling  views 
of  the  English  Channel  to  the  southward — and  the 
Channel  thrilled  us. 

Our  road  tunneled  through  a  hill;  an  unexpected 
thing,  this  up-to-date  novelty  in  road-making  and 
suggestive  of  the  old  tunneled  road  at  Posilipo;  and 
we  climbed  long,  slow,  easy  slopes,  and  we  coasted 
easily  down  long  and  gliding  sweeps,  with  cattle  graz- 
ing peacefully  along  the  roadside. 

Thus  far  we  have  said  nothing  about  the  national 
plant  of  England.  It  has  been  so  astonishing,  so 
amazing,  that  we  have  wanted  to  see  if  there  could 
be  any  place  without  it.  But  it  really  grows  every- 
where. And  it  is  the  stinging  nettle!  Every  day 
we  have  seen  it  and  seen  it  freely,  in  the  corners  of 
fields,  in  the  hedges,  along  the  gardens,  beside  clumps 
of  trees,  beside  the  shrubs;  the  noxious  thing  grows 
everywhere;  and  it  grows  thickly.     Yet  we  do  not 


136 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

remember  ever  having  heard  or  read  of  the  nettle  as 
a  frequent  growth  in  England!  Such  things  as  the 
primrose  and  the  hawthorn  are  emphasized,  and  prop- 
erly enough  so,  but  it  is  certainly  strange,  this  silence 
in  regard  to  the  nettle  on  the  part  of  natives  and  vis- 
itors alike. 


The  bishop's  garden  at  Salisbury 


Invading  the  solitude  or  Stone henge 


CHAPTER  XIV 

INTO   THE   SOUTH   DOWNS 

AFTER  a  run  of  sixty-seven  miles,  for  our  stay 
in  Exeter  had  pleasantly  shortened  our  run- 
ning time,  we  came  in  the  early  twihght  to  clean 
and  prosperous-looking  Bridport,  and  we  casually 
noticed  that  there  were  things  in  the  shop  windows 
as  well  as  in  the  hotels  that  were  from  Cleveland  and 
from  Pittsburgh! 

We  were  struck,  in  this  town,  by  the  numerous 
curved,  old-fashioned  big-bowed  windows,  giving  a 
distinct  impression  as  of  a  sailor  town;  although  it 
did  not  seem  precisely  clear  why  this  should  be  so, 
and  it  may  have  been  only  from  some  fancied  re- 
semblance to  the  picturesque  cabin-windowed  sterns 
of  old-fashioned  sailing  ships. 

And  it  is  really  a  sailor-town,  and,  although  the  sea 
is  not  actually  visible,  it  is  at  least  not  far  away,  and 
the  town  is  given  a  port  name  because  it  is  really  a 
port,  with  a  stream  leading  up  from  the  Channel. 

Bridport,  we  were  surprised  to  find,  is  really  a 
place  of  note;  one  cannot  always  tell  about  a  town 
any  more  than  about  a  person  whether  or  not  it  is 
famous,  or,  if  famous,  precisely  what  for,  and  the 
distinction  of  Bridport  we  found  to  be  that  it  is,  or 
at  least  was,  a  world-manufacturing  place  of  fish-nets 
and  tennis-nets.  Some  time  ago,  also,  it  actually  held 
the  monopoly  of  making  the  rope  for  the  British  navy 
— and  probably  enough  it  made  a  great  deal  for  an- 
other purpose  not  so  much  a  feature  of  present-day 
English  life  as  it  was  not  so  very  long  ago. 

137 


138 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

We  went  on  towards  Dorchester  through  the  cool 
forenoon  air;  a  hilly  run  of  some  fifteen  miles  past 
many  hedges  white  with  elderflower;  and  into  one 
we  see  a  weasel. go  darting,  with  its  sharp  little 
scream.  We  breathe  with  delight  the  fine  exhila- 
rating air,  and  we  see  great  stretches  of  the  cool  gray 
sea  under  a  white  and  cloudy  sky;  and  the  road- 
builders,  as  we  have  noticed  in  other  places,  seem  to 
have  picked  the  highest  pieces  of  land  in  sight  and 
then  run  their  roads  right  over  them,  thus  giving 
splendid  expanses  of  view. 

A  bleakness  comes  over  the  countryside,  and  the 
few  houses  that  one  sees  on  the  Downs  are  tucked 
deep  in  protective  valleys.  A  white  road  winds  nar- 
rowly on  between  green  banks  and  a  cool  wind  comes 
sweeping  in  and  tosses  and  sways  the  now  blossom- 
less  tall  hawthorns  that  thicken  the  hedges  on  the 
windy  heights;  and  there  are  great  fields  of  coarse, 
yellow-blossoming  gorse. 

We  pass  a  beautiful  stone  lodge  at  the  entrance  to 
a  private  estate;  the  only  rich-looking  private  estate 
that  we  have  seen  for  a  long  time,  although  for  so 
much  of  our  journey  heretofore  rich  private  estates 
have  been  omnipresent.  We  sweep  quietly  into  a 
little  village  of  trim-built  stone  cottages,  with  a  brook 
beside  the  road,  and  the  women  come  running  to  their 
doors  for  mail  as  we  honk. 

The  country,  as  in  most  of  England,  is  well  sign- 
posted at  the  crossroads,  but  there  is  a  great  per- 
verseness  about  it,  for  the  four  signs  could  be  put 
one  above  the  other,  instead  of  all  at  one  height,  and 
would  thus  be  vastly  more  advantageous,  for  the 
blanketing  method  of  these  posts  often  makes  trav- 
elers, because  they  cannot  soon  enough  read  the 
looked-for  name,  run  forward  on  the  wrong  road, 
only  to  back  off  again.  But  we  forget  such  things  as 
we  notice  a  passing  girl  carrying  two  large  tin  pails 


INTO  THE  SOUTH  DOWNS 139 

labeled  plainly  with  the  name  of  a  brand  of  Chicago 
lard! 

We  pass  extraordinarily  fat,  brown  cattle  on  their 
way  to  market,  each  with  a  man  on  horseback  or  in 
a  cart  overseeing  a  single  man  on  foot;  and  it  all 
seems  economically  wrong,  except  that  we  realize  that 
men's  labor,  after  all,  is  cheap  in  England,  even 
though  in  the  towns  and  cities  the  labor  unions  are 
raising  the  pay  of  mechanics,  and  thus  making  men 
more  worth  while. 

Across  a  great  bare  stretch  we  see  miles  away  the 
spires  of  a  city;  and,  such  being  the  influence  of  a 
man  who  is  a  classic  in  his  own  lifetime,  we  think  of 
this  distant  place  as  being  not  so  much  Dorchester 
as  Hardy's  town,  Casterbridge. 

Our  final  approach  to  Casterbridge  is  through  a 
mighty  colonnade  of  elms,  with  branches  overarching 
and  interlacing  across  the  road;  quite  the  most  strik- 
ing of  any  of  the  similar  road-arched  avenues  that  we 
have  yet  seen. 

The  name  of  Dorchester  is  at  once  remindful  of 
New  England,  and  indeed  many  early  New  England 
settlers  and  sailors  went  from  this  vicinity.  In  fact, 
all  this  part  of  England,  so  we  noticed,  seems  full 
of  a  subtle  and  intangible  sense  of  the  closeness  of 
America,  and  it  pleased  us  that  a  delightful  Eng- 
lishman in  Dorchester  told  us  that  a  memorial  had 
been  unveiled  only  a  few  weeks  before  in  a  town  less 
than  ten  miles  from  here,  in  honor  of  that  Endicott 
who  was  such  a  figure  in  early  New  England  history ; 
and  it  pleased  us  that  the  Englishman  could  quote 
these  American  lines  on  Endicott: 

A  grave,  strong  man,  who  knew  no  peer 
In  the  pilgrim  land,  where  he  ruled  in  fear 
Of  God,  not  man,  and  for  good  or  ill, 
Held  his  trust  with  an  iron  will.  " 


140 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

Entering  the  little  city  we  passed  by  a  barracks 
where  a  regiment  of  regulars  in  yellowish  green  were 
earnestly  drilling,  not  thinking  that  in  a  few  weeks 
they  would  be  at  something  very  much  more  than 
drilling  on  the  other  side  of  the  Channel. 

We  turned  aside  to  a  huge  Roman  amphitheater, 
much  the  most  remarkable  of  all  the  Roman  remains 
of  this  region,  rich  as  it  is  in  various  mementos  of 
this  sort.  It  is  a  large  circular,  or  rather  oval,  earth- 
work which  would  pass  at  home  for  excellent  work  of 
the  Mound  Builders,  and  the  great  banks  are  about 
thirty-five  feet  high.  Boys  were  playing  cricket  in 
the  interior  of  the  amphitheater  and  modern  and  un- 
attractive little  houses  have  been  built  close  about, 
outside.  In  the  days  of  Roman  dominion  the  Ro- 
mans used  to  gather  here  for  the  amusement  of  seeing 
Britons  kill  wild  animals,  or  each  other,  and  the  Eng- 
lish followed  this  more  or  less  laudable  example  by 
making  the  amphitheater  a  place  for  public  execu- 
tion up  to  quite  recent  years;  and  the  people  here 
will  tell  you  with  a  sort  of  pride  that  some  twelve 
thousand  spectators  would  gather  for  such  an  event. 
Without  insisting  too  much  upon  such  things  as  these, 
it  is  well  to  remember  how  very  near  civilization  is 
to  barbarism. 

An  exceedingly  interesting  looldng  place  is  Dor- 
chester; and  it  has  a  pleasant  sort  of  character  with- 
out possessing  any  particularly  notable  features.  It 
really  seems,  here,  as  if  the  interest  in  Hardy  lessens 
one's  interest  in  other  things,  and  one  retains  a  vivid 
impression  of  such  an  intrinsically  ordinary  scene  as 
that  of  half  a  dozen  heavy  grain  wagons  grouped  to- 
gether, each  with  three  horses,  just  because  the  mayor 
of  Casterbridge  was  a  dealer  in  grain.  We  were  not 
satisfied  until  we  had  identified  the  window  of  the 
second-story  room  of  the  inn  where  he  was  given  a 
great  dinner. 


INTO  THE  SOUTH  DOWNS 141 

Instantly  upon  leaving  Dorchester  we  were  run- 
ning through  a  rich  parklike,  farm-land  country: 
these  two  contradictory  phrases  both  being  ap- 
plicable ;  and  everywhere  we  noticed  many  cattle  and 
so  very  many  sheep  that  we  were  not  only  quite  ready 
to  believe  the  local  assertion  that  there  are  over  three- 
quarters  of  a  million  sheep  around  Dorchester,  but 
also  felt  that  all  the  mutton-chops  of  England  were 
quite  accounted  for — and  we  wondered  why  so  often 
there  could  be  only  bacon  and  eggs  or  'am!  It  is  one 
of  life's  mysteries. 

It  would  seem  as  if  the  people  of  these  downs  (the 
contour  of  the  land  is  such  as  to  justify  the  phrase, 
these  ups  and  downs)  must  have  quite  a  love  for 
color,  for  we  pass  a  green-bloused  girl  on  a  blue 
bicycle,  an  orange-capped  girl  walking  to  school,  pur- 
ple schoolbag  in  hand,  and  a  wagon  all  blue  and  red 
and  brown  and  white,  with  dappled  horses  wearing 
little  white,  red-tasseled  caps  above  their  ears.  We 
enter  a  little  village  with  pretty  blue  flowers  grow- 
ing in  thick  clusters  beside  the  doorsteps  and  with 
gardens  a  brilliant  red  with  big  red  poppies,  and  with 
wattles  tied  in  big  bundles  beside  cottages,  and  we 
come  to  Blandford. 

Now,  we  had  anticipated  nothing  of  interest  in 
Blandford,  and  had  expected  to  pass  through  with- 
out stopping,  but,  such  being  the  pleasant  unexpect- 
edness of  travel,  it  became  to  us  much  more  than  a 
mere  catchpoint  on  a  map. 

In  the  first  place,  there  was  a  particularly  charm- 
ing entrance  to  the  town,  past  a  little  stream  which 
attractively  broadens  and  is  full  of  waterlilies;  and 
at  one  side  is  a  line  of  ancient  dormer-windowed 
houses  and  at  the  other  a  beautiful  entrance  to  a  beau- 
tiful estate ;  and  great  trees  stand  shadingly,  in  a  cen- 
tral cluster.  Spots  like  this  are  fascinating  just  be- 
cause of  their  mere  existence.    Travelers  cannot  ask 


1^^ TOURING  GREAT  BRITAUST 

everywhere  for  definite  historic  interest.  Beauty  is 
its  own  excuse  for  being. 

Blandf ord  is  a  town  of  red-tiled  roofs,  mossy-toned 
by  age;  one  thinks  of  Ruskin's  phrase  about  English 
towns  "  dressed  in  red-tiled  roofs  as  our  old  women 
in  red  cloaks."  The  people  will  tell  you  that  every 
house  used  to  be  thatched,  but  that  there  were  so 
many  fires  in  the  town  that  quite  recently,  which  you 
find  to  mean  two  hundred  years  ago.  Parliament  for- 
bade Blandf  ord  having  any  thatched  roofs.  (Par- 
liament even  to  this  day  meddles  in  all  sorts  of  Eng- 
lish little  affairs,  such  as  are  left  in  other  countries 
to  local  authorities.)  For  our  own  part  we  have  thus 
far  on  this  entire  journey  seen  no  more  than  three 
buildings  that  have  been  burnt  within  the  past  two 
hundred  years,  and  each  of  them  was  a  garage! 

A  pleasant  feature  of  Blandford  is  its  numerous 
ancient  and  venerable  charities;  it  has  quaint  alms- 
houses founded  over  two  centuries  ago  by  charitable 
individuals;  other  individuals  long  ago  left  money  to 
provide  for  apprenticing  young  lads  to  fishermen,  or 
for  "  binding  out  "  poor  girls,  or  for  clothing  reputa- 
ble old  men  and  women  who  have  never  received 
parish  relief  and  who  "  are  of  sober  life  and  conver- 
sation, and  constant  in  attendance  at  church."  But 
most  interesting  of  all  is  an  ancient  blue-coat  school, 
founded  by  a  certain  Archbishop  Wake  back  in  the 
seventeenth  century,  who  provided  means  for  edu- 
cating twelve  poor  boys,  who  should  be  taught  to 
read,  to  write  and  cast  accounts,  and  to  receive  in- 
struction in  the  Protestant  religion,  and  who  should  be 
dressed  in  the  manner  of  the  "blue-coat  schools  in 
London." 

For  so  small  a  number,  twelve  boys  really  give 
quite  an  air  to  the  place,  with  their  quaintly- 
fashioned,  round,  blue-tasseled  caps,  their  white- 
rabat  ties,  their  mustard-colored  stockings,  their  blue 


INTO  THE  SOUTH  DOWNS 148 

coats  coming  down  to  their  ankles  and  their  silver 
buttons,  on  each  of  which  are  the  words  "  Archbishop 
Wake's  Charity ";  and  the  boys  themselves  are  a 
frank-faced,  manly-looking  set. 

All  about  Blandford  is  extremely  pretty  country, 
and  as  we  left  the  town  we  were  at  first  misdirected 
for  half  a  mile  or  so,  but  it  was  a  delightful  misdi- 
rection, for  it  took  us  past  adorable  stretches  of  a 
great  private  park,  with  scores  of  deer  and  of  little 
dappled  fawns,  graceful  and  sweet  and  wild,  scat- 
tered among  the  huge  trees  and  over  the  smooth 
green  turf.  Not  every  town  has  both  its  entrances 
and  its  exits  so  felicitous! 

And  now  we  are  off  for  Salisbury,  twenty-five 
miles  away,  and  we  mount  a  hill,  and  in  front  of  us 
a  great  long-eared  hare  dashes  across  the  road, 
and  unexpectedly  great  views  open  for  miles  and 
miles,  with  fields  curiously  crossed  by  lines  of  trees, 
and  in  all  these  wide-sweeping  miles  not  a  single 
house  to  be  seen,  although  we  find  as  we  go  onward 
that  a  few  are  nooked  away  in  little  hollows. 

Only  two  miles  out  of  Blandford  we  run  through 
tiny  Pimperne ;  the  unexpectedness  of  interest  of  this 
little  place  being  that  its  manorial  rights  were  granted 
by  Henry  the  Eighth  to  Catherine  Howard  and  aft- 
erward to  Katherine  Parr,  and  in  each  case,  so  the 
phrase  had  it — a  sinister  phrase,  considering  who  was 
the  King — the  grant  was  made  to  the  King's  wife 
"for  life"! 

We  passed  a  wagon  heavily  loaded  with  wattle- 
fence  made  with  sharp-pointed  stakes,  for  posts, 
ready  to  stick  in  the  ground;  we  passed  bleak  open 
spaces,  unhedged  and  unwalled  from  the  road,  but 
not  entirely  unusable  land  like  much  of  the  open 
moorland  that  we  have  seen,  for  here  and  there  we 
noticed  flocks  of  sheep  grazing.  Beautifully  crested 
birds  and  great  black-and-white  magpies  fly  here  and 


144 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

there,  and  we  meet  a  bright  blue  wagon  with  yellow 
cloth  ears  on  the  horses,  and  we  smile  as  we  see  sign- 
posts marked  "  Sarum,"  for  they  expect  even  stran- 
gers to  know  that  it  means  Salisbury. 

We  go  on  and  on  through  the  quiet  bleakness,  and 
with  the  curiously  continued  absence  of  both  hedges 
and  roadside  walls;  and  the  land  stretches  off  level 
on  either  side  of  the  road  and  distant  heights  rise  here 
and  there;  and  frequently  one  sees  some  ancient  pre- 
historic tumulus  and  not  infrequently  there  are 
ancient  earth  rings  of  a  history  forever  to  remain 
unknown.  We  look  far  ahead  and  for  miles  see  the 
road  undulating  like  a  white  chalk  mark  across  the 
vast  bleakness,  and  after  a  while  we  come  to  where 
there  are  some  farms  dotted  among  the  uncultivated 
stretches,  and  we  see  a  marvelous  field  with  literally 
thousands  and  thousands  of  scarlet  poppies  mingled 
with  thousands  and  thousands  of  flowers  tiny  and 
white;  a  wonderful  thing  to  see. 

And  suddenly  we  see,  very  far  away,  what  seems 
to  be  a  little  spire  sticking  up  through  a  hole  in  the 
downs. 


M 

^ 

m^^y     -i^JH 

^^ 

i< 

■■9 

M 

^^^ 

m 

m^^^n 

The  Itchex,  a  river  of  Izaak  Walton^ 


Where  Franklin  wrote  most  of  his  Autobiography;  at  Twyford 


CHAPTER  XV 

THE  RIDE  TO   WINCHESTER 

BUT  it  was  not  a  little  spire;  on  the  contrary,  it 
was  the  very  tallest  spire  in  all  England.  And 
it  did  not  come  up  from  a  hole  in  the  downs, 
but  rose  above  Salisbury  Cathedral,  the  city  of  Salis- 
bury standing  on  a  level  much  lower  than  that  of  the 
road  over  which  we  were  advancing. 

We  turned  down  a  valley  road,  passing  clumps  of 
large  trees  and  a  few  farmers  stolidly  stooping  to 
their  work.  And  we  ran  into  the  tiny  village  of 
Coombe  Bassett  and  the  very  unexpectedness  of  the 
place  added  vastly  to  its  charm.  It  is  a  little  village 
of  ancient  houses,  weathered  to  soft  colorings,  with 
little  stone  bridges  crossing  a  little  stream  in  little 
arching  leaps,  and  the  little  stream  itself  broadening 
out  with  ducks  ideally  floating:  a  village  where  is  the 
very  ecstasy  of  thatched  roofing,  for  even  a  long  stone 
wall  is  thatched  and  there  is  a  most  immense  extent  of 
thatched  roofed  barn. 

Ancient  entrance  gates,  with  lichened-stone  lions 
couchant  upon  the  tops  of  ancient  lichened-stone 
posts,  lead  into  an  ancient  private  estate,  and  close 
beside,  as  if  to  add  a  final  touch  of  color,  is  a  great 
field  that  is  an  unbroken  glow  of  acres  of  turnip  seed 
in  brightest  yellow.  And  from  here  it  was  a  short  run 
into  Salisbury. 

Our  first  impression  of  Salisbury  was  of  an  inn,  for 
it  was  past  luncheon-time  when  we  arrived  in  the  city, 
and  we  came  upon  an  attractive-looking  restaurant 
as  we  motored  in,  and  we  stopped,  and  found  the 

145 


146 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

most  excellent  service,  with  everything  clean  and  ex- 
quisite. In  England  it  is  always  difficult  to  get  away 
from  historical  and  literary  associations,  and  so  we 
found  that  in  this  very  inn  Dickens  did  some  of  his 
writing  and  that  Henry  Laurens,  President  of  the 
Continental  Congress,  rested  here  on  his  way  to  Lon- 
don in  1780 — where  he  was  promptly  put  in  the 
Tower  and  kept  there  for  fifteen  months. 

We  entered  the  cathedral  grounds  through  an 
ancient  gateway,  from  the  inner  side  of  which  there 
was  recently  taken  down  a  Stuart  stone  effigy  to  he 
replaced  by  one  of  Edward  the  Seventh ;  a  rather  in- 
congruous and  modern  touch,  but  the  Stuart  effigy 
was  also  quite  out  of  keeping  with  this  extremely 
beautiful  ancient  gate,  and  as  the  centuries  merge 
vaguely  together  Edward  will  not  seem  any  worse 
than  Charles  would  have  done. 

After  going  through  the  gate,  we  pass  along  a 
narrow  way  with  ancient  houses  close  to  the  side- 
walks, and  thence  step  out  into  an  open  space — and 
such  an  open  space!  For  there  are  enormous  elms 
(it  took  all  four  of  us  to  span  one,  fingers  to  fingers!) 
and  ancient  great  cedars  of  Lebanon;  and  there  is 
splendid  greenery  all  around  the  great  space  and 
there  are  beautiful  old  houses  with  walls  and  gates 
and  ivy,  making  the  very  perfection  of  sheltered  pa- 
trician living.  Age  and  culture  and  history  and  quiet 
all  are  here,  and  in  the  center  of  this  great  space  is 
the  beautiful  cathedral.  Yet,  although  undeniably 
beautiful,  you  feel  that  it  is  not  so  adorable  as  is  its 
superb  setting  of  great  greenery  and  old  buildings 
and  perfect  gardens.  And  then,  after  a  while,  you 
realize,  with  some  surprise,  that  your  love  for  the 
exterior  of  the  cathedral  is  immensely  growing  upon 
you. 

Our  strongest  single  impression  is  not  of  the  cathe- 
dral itself,  but  of  the  exquisite  beauty,  the  perfect 


THE  RIDE  TO  WINCHESTER 147 

repose,  the  seclusion,  of  the  bishop's  private  garden 
and  home — a  very  marvel  of  attractiveness. 

The  exterior  of  Salisbury  Cathedral  is  softened  to 
a  color  of  greenish  gray,  and  the  fine  length  of  the 
interior  is  not  destroyed  by  screen  or  ill-placed  organ, 
as  is  unhappily  usual  with  Enghsh  cathedrals. 

A  cathedral-in-a-hurry,  this,  for  it  was  all  built 
within  the  space  of  forty  years  or  so,  instead  of,  as 
with  most  cathedrals,  growing  gradually  through 
many  generations  or  even  centuries.  And  yet,  as  one 
of  the  clergy  carefully  pointed  out  to  us,  it  was  really 
not  all  built  within  forty  years,  for  the  spire  was  not 
built  for  seventy  years! 

A  most  agreeable  town  is  Salisbury,  with  delight- 
ful glimpses  everywhere  through  gates  and  passages 
and  into  closes ;  more  than  any  other,  this  seems  to  us 
to  be  the  typical  English  cathedral  town.  And  it 
seems  to  grow  a  kind  of  sweet-faced  young  English 
girl  that  is  altogether  fine  and  characteristic. 

Following  Salisbury,  our  next  objective  was  Stone- 
henge,  and  the  road  to  Stonehenge  was  a  great  sur- 
prise; we  expected  bleakness,  but  found  instead  a 
lushness  even  more  than  usually  rich.  Nowhere  are 
cattle  more  sleek ;  nowhere  do  grass  and  hedges  grow 
more  full  and  green;  nowhere  are  there  more  beau- 
tiful thatched  roofs;  nowhere  is  there  a  more  happy 
country ;  nowhere  are  there  prettier  lanes.  The  pros- 
perous farms  and  farmers,  the  fat  chickens,  the  sleek 
kittens,  the  great  vegetables,  the  splendid  roses,  the 
genial  well-fed  dogs,  all  unite  to  mark  the  contrast 
with  the  expected  bleakness — expected  because  there 
was  so  much  of  bleakness  in  approaching  Salisbury, 
and  because  Stonehenge  itself  looms  in  the  fancy  as 
the  most  grim  and  solemn  memorial  of  ancient  days 
in  all  England. 

It  is  only  ten  miles  to  Stonehenge,  and  nine  and 
a  half  of  the  miles  are  such  as  we  have  just  described. 


148 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

And  then  comes  that  last  half  mile,  and  suddenly 
there  opens  out  a  great  drear  plain,  almost  level,  but 
with  low-rising  sweeps.  It  marks  the  extreme  of 
desolateness,  especially  in  the  twilight,  with  the  dis- 
tances growing  vaguely  dim.  The  plain  is  dotted 
with  mounds,  ancient  tumuli,  marking  where  were 
Druid  circles ;  and  there  in  front  of  us,  under  a  heavy, 
black  and  cloudy  sky,  is  Stonehenge. 

A  cold  dreary  wind  was  blowing;  the  sun  was  set- 
ting; it  is  at  such  a  time  that  Stonehenge  should  be 
seen  and  not  in  the  bright  sunlight.  Far  over  on  the 
distant  right  were  lines  and  lines  of  tents,  for  regi- 
ments were  camping  there,  but  so  far  away  that  we 
could  scarcely  pick  out  in  the  gathering  gloom  their 
pickets  and  sentries. 

No  one  has  the  slightest  idea,  any  more  than  the 
merest  guess,  of  what  Stonehenge  means.  That  it 
antedates  all  history  and  that  it  is  supposed  to  have 
been  set  up  by  the  Druids  is  all.  But  what  a  stu- 
pendous vagueness  this  means!  And  in  what  a  set- 
ting do  the  stones  stand!  They  are  huge  monoliths, 
but  they  seem  little  in  that  immensity  of  bare  plain, 
but  when  you  go  close  to  them  you  find  that  the 
largest  stone  stands  twenty-two  feet  in  height.  A 
few  are  still  topped  by  other  stones  as  huge,  balanced 
horizontally,  high  in  the  air.  From  time  to  time  in 
the  course  of  the  centuries  some  of  the  stones  have 
fallen,  and  the  last,  by  a  remarkable  chance,  tumbled 
on  the  first  day  of  this  twentieth  century. 

One  receives  at  Stonehenge  the  overtopping  im- 
pression of  the  extent  of  English  history  and  tradi- 
tion. As  one  travels  up  and  down  the  land  he  finds 
the  things  of  the  present  day,  of  the  Stuarts  and 
Tudors,  of  the  Normans,  the  Saxons,  the  early 
British,  the  Romans ;  and  here  he  reaches  back  to  the 
time  of  the  Druids  and  the  vaguest  mystery. 

As  we  finally  left  Stonehenge  the  plain  was  grow- 


THE  RIDE  TO  WINCHESTER 149 

ing  more  dim  and  more  dark,  and  thus  it  remains  in 
our  memory;  and  we  went  on  our  way  to  Andover, 
where  we  were  to  spend  the  night,  busied  with 
thoughts  of  the  dim,  dim  past.  A  good  Xew  Eng- 
land name  is  Andover;  and,  indeed,  there  are  many 
good  New  England  names  all  about,  such  as  Stock- 
bridge,  Amesbury  and  Newton.  Next  morning,  and 
never  was  there  a  finer  and  sweeter  morning  air, 
we  motored  on,  in  the  cool  forenoon,  to  ancient 
Winchester. 

The  cathedral  of  Winchester  is  tucked  away  with 
quite  an  effect  of  casualness,  as  if  the  city  had  tucked 
it  into  an  inside  pocket;  and  it  is  often  referred  to  as 
a  cathedral  built  by  Wilham  of  Wykeham,  although 
in  reality  he  spent  infinite  and  well-meaning  pains  in 
spoiling  it.  But  there  is  enough  left  in  odd  corners 
of  the  interior  to  show  the  noble  grandeur  of  the 
original  Norman  style.  Of  course  it  is  beautiful, 
although  its  dignity  has  been  so  tampered  with ;  and, 
after  all,  such  things  must  be  all  a  matter  of  com- 
parison ;  for,  as  Henry  James  expressed  it,  when  de- 
scribing slightingly  one  of  the  English  cathedrals, 
there  was  so  much  of  beauty  in  it  that  if  it  were  in 
America  instead  of  in  England,  where  so  many  beau- 
tiful cathedrals  exist,  we  should  all  pilgrimage  to  it 
on  our  hands  and  knees. 

The  most  interesting  memories  in  Winchester  clus- 
ter about  the  site  of  William  the  Conqueror's  castle, 
where  now  there  stands  an  ancient  house  on  the  main 
street,  bearing  the  peaceful  sign  "  Tea  Room  " ;  and 
nothing  could  be  less  expressive  of  a  great  tragedy 
of  love  that  turned  to  hate.  The  wife  of  William  the 
Conqueror,  Matilda  of  Flanders,  long  before  he  mar- 
ried her,  wished  to  marry  a  young  English  nobleman, 
who,  as  ambassador  from  Edward  the  Confessor  to 
her  father's  court,  made  love  to  her  and  then  jilted 
her.    Years  afterward,  when  she  was  William's  wife 


150 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

and  William  had  conquered  England,  she  led  him  to 
confiscate  her  perfidious  lover's  lands  and  have  him 
seized  and  placed  in  a  dungeon  in  the  castle  of  Win- 
chester; after  which,  no  place  in  England  was  such 
a  favorite  resort  for  the  fierce  Matilda,  who  loved  to 
have  great  dinners  and  receive  ambassadors  and  listen 
to  minstrels  and  gossip  with  the  courtiers  right  over 
the  dungeon  where  her  former  lover  was  immured. 
And  of  course  he  stayed  there  till  he  died,  for  it  was 
seldom  in  the  good  old  days  that  the  quality  of  mercy 
was  mercifully  strained. 

It  amused  us  to  see,  in  Winchester,  young  women 
motoring  in  yellow  jackets  and  long  trailing  purple 
veils,  and  to  notice  a  shop  with  the  sign  "  Bootmakers 
to  the  Gentlemen  Commoners  of  Winchester  Col- 
lege "  (which,  by  the  way,  is  really  a  preparatory 
school),  and  to  see,  on  this  Sunday  afternoon,  how 
the  college  boys  permeated  the  walks  in  their  frock 
coats  and  tall  silk  hats,  and  how  little  boys  of  some 
other  school  went  about  with  Eton  jackets,  big  white 
collars,  white  straw  hats  with  long  black  strings,  and 
very  long  trousers,  and  how  other  young  men,  in  high 
silk  hats  and  cut-away  coats  and  white  waistcoats, 
walked  by  the  river's  edge. 

It  is  difficult  to  take  with  entire  seriousness  an 
ecclesiastical  city  which  both  casually  and  calmly 
refers  to  a  principal  inn  as  the  "  God  Begot  House." 
The  citizens  have  been  doing  it  for  so  many  genera- 
tions that  they  have  lost  all  sense  of  the  meaning 
of  the  words ;  as  a  matter  of  fact,  the  inn  has  a  very 
ancient  lettering  over  its  door,  "  Ye  olde  Hostel  of 
God  Begot ";  and  we  found  it  an  excellent  place  for 
luncheon,  and  we  noticed  that  an  amusing  and  very 
definite  desire  on  the  part  of  the  management,  to 
manage  the  guests  as  well  as  to  manage  the  inn,  did 
not  prevent  it  from  being  crowded. 

At  the  edge  of  Winchester  is  a  fascinating  sur- 


THE  RIDE  TO  WINCHESTER 151 

vival,  an  ancient  charity  still  maintained  in  ancient 
buildings.  Far  back  in  1136 — and  how  far  away  that 
is! — provision  w^as  made  for  the  complete  mainte- 
nance of  thirteen  poor  men  and  for  giving  a  daily 
dole  of  ale  and  bread  to  wayfarers.  And  here  the 
charity  is  still  continued. 

Far  from  the  main  highway  we  passed  through  a 
great  gate  into  a  quadrangle  and  on  through  an 
ancient  gatehouse  into  another  quadrangle,  delight- 
fully grassy,  and  one  side  of  this  second  quadrangle 
is  faced  with  a  row  of  thirteen  old  houses,  each  with 
its  individual  living-rooms,  its  individual  chimney  and 
its  individual  old  man.  Such  picturesque  old  houses, 
such  picturesque  old  chimneys,  such  picturesque  old 
men !  And  on  the  other  side  of  the  quadrangle  is  the 
church  of  St.  Cross,  built  for  the  old  charity.  The 
church  was  built  six  hundred  and  fifty  years  ago,  and 
its  marvelous  old,  round  Norman  pillars  are  notable 
for  being  over  three  feet  more  in  circumference  than 
in  height  of  shaft. 

Though  fresh  from  our  luncheon  at  the  Begot 
Hostel,  as  genuine  wayfarers  we  looked  for  the  dole, 
the  horn  of  ale  and  the  bread,  but  found  that,  al- 
though it  has  been  given  regularly  for  eight  hundred 
years  and  is  still  given,  it  always  skips  Sundays,  on 
which  day  it  is  not  dispensed,  but  dispensed  with. 

We  were  taken  about  by  Brother  Gardner,  Num- 
ber 12,  dressed  in  ancient  costume  of  long,  black, 
full-sleeved  cloak  and  puffy  black  cloth  hat,  and  then 
the  governor  of  the  place  took  us  into  his  own  private 
garden,  a  high-walled  garden,  where  there  were 
myriad  and  marvelous  flowers  and  a  great  pool  with 
trout  and  with  calla  lilies  blossoming  abundantly, 
with  ten  flowers  to  a  plant. 

It  ought  to  be  added  that  the  old  brothers  are  par- 
ticularly proud  of  the  large  silver  crosses  that  they 
wear  upon  their  cloaks.     Three  or  four  of  these 


152 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

crosses,  that  of  Brother  Gardner  among  them,  are 
the  very  crosses  that  have  come  down,  from  one  pen- 
sioner to  another,  since  the  twelfth  century.  To 
handle  such  a  cross  puts  one  literally  in  touch  with 
the  past. 

After  going  about  as  we  have  in  England  it  seems 
odd  to  hear  people  say  that  there  is  a  lack  of  uniforms 
and  costume  there!  For  here  in  Winchester  alone 
there  are  a  number  of  distinctive  kinds,  including 
those  of  the  army,  of  nurses  in  blue,  of  smart  maids  in 
white  at  brass-knockered  green  doors,  of  queer-hatted 
police,  of  vergers,  of  the  jacketed  schoolboys  and  the 
tall-hatted  youths  of  the  college,  of  the  many  clerics 
fluttering  about  the  cathedral  close,  and  of  these  old 
pensioners,  and  an  order  of  old  men  with  cloaks  of 
garnet — nor  does  this  fully  exhaust  the  Winchester 
list. 

On  the  whole,  it  seems  as  if  there  cannot  be  a  more 
satisfactory,  mellow  and  altogether  delightful  bit  of 
the  ancient  past  than  is  here  at  St.  Cross,  so  finely 
preserved  and  kept  in  wise  and  daily  use  since  within 
less  than  a  century  of  William  the  Conqueror. 

Leaving  old  St.  Cross,  we  were  on  the  road  again — 
all  Winchester  seemed  to  be  out  this  way  taking  long, 
Sunday-afternoon  strolls — and  soon  came  to  the 
River  Itchen,  a  stream  deepish,  broad,  swift-running, 
bordered  by  rushy  banks  and  so  distinctly  a  brimming 
river  that  there  is  not  an  inch  of  bank  above  the  level 
of  the  water.  We  paused  on  the  bridge  and  looked 
at  this  river,  so  gentle  in  spite  of  its  volume  and  swift- 
ness, as  it  came  on  past  a  house  and  beautiful  gardens 
and  through  a  placid  region  of  trees  and  meadows  and 
sunlight,  and  we  looked  down  into  its  clear  depths 
to  its  white-chalk  bottom  and  at  the  water  plants 
waving  their  fernlike  leaves  below  the  surface — and 
we  were  immensely  pleased  that  we  actually  saw  fish ! 
For  old,  perennially  young  Izaak  Walton  loved  this 


THE  RIDE  TO  WINCHESTER 153 

river  when  he  lived  in  Winchester;  that  wise  and 
genial  philosopher,  the  contemporary  of  Pepys,  who 
loved  to  gaze  at  "  meadows  and  flowery  meads  and 
primrose  banks  "  and  who  could  quaintly  set  down 
that  he  did  not  envy  the  man  who  had  more  money 
than  himself  and  finer  food  and  finer  clothes,  but 
"  only  the  man  who  caught  more  fish."  After  all,  his 
book  holds  an  imperishable  popularity  after  all  these 
years,  and  so  this  sweet  full  river,  so  near  his  home, 
seems  full  of  a  sort  of  philosophic  interest. 

Only  two  or  three  miles  away  is  Twyf ord,  a  sedate 
httle  village,  very  attractive  and  agreeable,  ap- 
proached by  an  attractive  and  agreeable  road ;  usually 
sedate,  we  should  say,  and  usually  very  quiet  in  its 
Sabbath  calm,  but  only  a  moment  before  we  got  there 
two  motors  had  tried  to  pass  in  the  crossroads  at  the 
village  center,  in  an  attempt,  apparently,  to  prove 
that  two  things  could  be  in  the  same  place  at  the  same 
time,  with  highly  disastrous  results  to  the  cars,  though 
fortunately  not  to  the  individuals,  and  with  a  com- 
plete breaking  of  the  usual  village  quietness. 

We  were  looking  for  a  house  in  which,  for  a  time, 
there  had  lived  a  far  greater  philosopher  and  greater 
man  than  the  great  Izaak:  we  were  looking,  in  fact, 
for  a  house  where  Benjamin  Franklin  lived  for  a 
time  as  an  honored  guest  and  in  which  he  wrote  most 
of  his  "  Autobiography  ";  and  a  house  connected  with 
such  a  book  and  with  such  an  American  was  cer- 
tainly well  worth  looking  for.  And  it  would  be  very 
interesting  to  see  at  what  kind  of  house  he  was  vis- 
iting, so  as  to  judge  as  to  what  kind  of  intimate  Eng- 
lish friends  he  had  made. 

But  it  was  very  difficult  to  find  the  house ;  although 
there  could  not  be  a  better  opportunity  to  inquire,  for 
the  entire  population  had  gathered  around  the  dam- 
aged cars. 

The  schoolmaster  had  never  heard  of  Franklin's 


154 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

having  been  at  Twyford;  the  lord  of  the  manor  (at 
least  we  thought  of  him  as  that,  for  he  was  the  chief 
man  of  the  place,  to  whom  thej^  all  gave  deference) 
had  also  never  heard  of  our  compatriot's  having  been 
there;  others  shook  their  heads  dubiously  and  were 
inclined  to  think  that  we  were  looking  for  some 
present-day  American  printer  in  hiding,  and  would 
have  drawn  suspiciously  away  had  it  not  been  for  the 
evident  concern  of  their  chief  man.  But  at  length 
our  query  was  answered,  for  the  lady  of  the  manor, 
appealed  to  by  her  husband,  promptly  pointed  out 
the  house  at  the  top  of  the  slope  down  which  we  had 
just  come.  "Benjamin  Franklin?  Oh,  yes;  he  was 
here  in  Twyford;  and  that  is  the  house,  up  there!  " 

Directly  facing  the  house,  across  the  narrow  road, 
we  noticed  a  great  double  aisle  of  huge  horse- 
chestnuts  casting  a  romantic  and  positively  awesome 
shade,  so  dense  as  to  make  a  darkness  beneath  the  trees 
even  in  mid-afternoon;  but  the  house  where  Franklin 
stayed  is  as  bright  and  cheerful  as  the  facing  wood  is 
somber.  This  house  would  alone  show  that  Franklin 
did  credit  to  himself  and  his  country  in  making 
friends  abroad,  for  it  is  a  fine,  rich  and  mellow  build- 
ing of  Georgian  brick,  with  its  front  delightfully 
faced  with  ivy  and  flowering  roses.  The  house  is 
really  a  mansion,  with  a  fine  classic  doorway,  and 
stands  inside  of  an  iron  gate,  nearer  the  road  than  is 
usual  with  such  places  in  England.  And  we  wished 
that  Franklin  had  recorded  his  impressions  of  this 
house  and  of  his  visit  to  it;  for  we  found  that  it  was 
the  summer  home  of  one  of  the  bishops  of  the  Eng- 
hsh  Church,  Bishop  Shipley,  who  admired  Franklin 
so  much  that  he  invited  him  to  be  his  house  guest 
here. 


E 


CHAPTER  XVI 

ON  THE  ROUTE  OF  THE  CONQUEROR 

NTERING  a  little  village  in  this  region,  we 
noticed  a  sign  at  the  side  of  the  road  which 
read, 

"  Please  Slow  for  School," 


and  on  leaving  the  village  we  were  amused  to  notice 
another  sign,  reading  with  cheerful  courtesy: 

"  Here  You  Are 
Thank  You." 

Leaving  Twyford  we  aimed  again  for  the  Channel 
coast,  and  we  followed  little-traveled  roads  through 
charming  country,  choosing  these  roads  for  the  sake 
of  shortening  the  distance  and  at  the  same  time  for 
the  sheer  joy  of  discovery;  they  were  marked  on  the 
maps  as  being  of  only  second-  and  third-rate  quality, 
but  from  an  American  standpoint  they  were  perfect ; 
one  cannot  speak  too  highly  of  English  roads,  and 
one  wonders  why  no  English  poet  has  grown  lyrical 
over  them. 

We  went  through  Wickham,  a  village  with  a  great 
rectangular  space  that  they  call  their  green — only 
there  was  no  green  upon  it — and  after  a  while  we 
came  to  Bishop's  Waltham,  where  a  huge  old  ruin 
stands  beside  a  sweet  little  lake  and  the  highway;  an- 
other of  the  many  New  England  names,  this,  and  we 
risked  a  small  jest  on  the  intelligent  policeman  of 
whom  we  asked  a  question  as  to  route.    We  merely 

155 


156 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

asked  if  he  were  the  original  Waltham  watch;  but 
really  one  should  not  risk  even  the  mildest  pleasantry 
on  an  Englishman ;  he  takes  it  too  seriously.  "  Yes, 
sir,"  said  the  policeman,  puzzled  but  courteous. 
"  Yes,  sir;  thank  you  very  much,  sir." 

We  merely  skirted  Portsmouth,  for  we  knew  that 
no  visitors  would  be  allowed  within  the  naval 
inclosures  and  that  the  city  has  very  little  to  attract 
strangers,  except  from  this  standpoint,  but  it  was 
interesting  to  go  on  under  modern  fortifications  that 
frowned  down  from  a  low  hillside  and  in  sight  of 
innumerable  wireless  poles,  battleships,  hoists,  a  great 
area  of  tide-water  flats  and  a  huge,  old  medieval 
castle  on  an  apparent  island,  standing  as  a  striking 
contrast  to  the  warlike  paraphernalia  of  to-day,  and 
as  we  went  on  we  were  constantly  meeting  and  pass- 
ing walkers,  for  it  was  Sunday  afternoon  and  the 
army  and  the  navy  were  out  with  their  sweethearts. 
Wherever  we  asked  as  to  the  road  we  were  told, 
"  Stryte  on,"  but  never  were  there  more  mysterious 
bendings  and  turnings  in  what  was  supposed  to  be 
a  straight  road  to  Chichester. 

Chichester  we  found  to  be  rather  a  nice  little  place, 
with  a  pile  of  churchly  buildings  along  the  main 
street  of  the  town.  Churches  and  cathedrals  that 
are  not  ruins  and  are  still  used  are  open  at  almost  any 
time  to  the  public,  but,  although  this  was  toward  the 
end  of  a  Sunday  afternoon,  the  cathedral  was  closed, 
but  we  readily  contented  ourselves  with  looking  at 
the  isolated  bell  tower,  a  structure  of  much  dignity, 
and  were  vastly  more  interested  in  a  splendidly  im- 
pressive old-time  town-cross,  which  is  really  a  series 
of  arches  raised  like  a  chapter-house  in  miniature, 
upon  a  central  pillar;  and,  a  very  modern  touch,  a 
policeman  stands  beside  the  old  cross  to  wave  motor- 
ists in  safety  around  it,  and  a  Salvation  Army  band 
was  playing  in  its  shadow. 


k...  ^1 


ROUTE  OF  THE  CONQUEROR 157 

In  a  dozen  miles  we  were  at  the  close-built  hillside 
town  of  Arundel,  where  stands  a  huge  semi-modern 
castle,  the  seat  of  the  Roman  Catholic  Duke  of  Nor- 
folk, and  in  the  town  is  a  modern  Roman  Catholic 
church  built  by  the  duke  as  if  to  show  that  some- 
thing can  still  be  done  by  a  sect  from  which  all  the 
great  cathedrals  were  taken ;  and  it  was  certainly  curi- 
ous to  realize  that  on  this  very  Sunday  we  had  been 
at  a  service  in  Winchester  Cathedral  where  there  was 
so  pitiful  a  handful  of  service-goers  as  to  seem  fewer 
in  number  than  the  clergy  in  evidence,  and  we  had 
been  at  Chichester  Cathedral,  which  was  closed,  and 
now  we  were  at  the  Arundel  church  and  it  was 
crowded  to  the  doors. 

There  was  still  plenty  of  daylight  and  we  thought 
we  could  still  make  Brighton,  but  in  a  few  miles  a 
heavy  twilight  that  was  almost  darkness  suddenly 
fell.  Every  pair  of  lovers  in  southern  England  must 
have  been  walking  in  the  middle  of  that  road,  and 
its  twists  and  corners  became  more  numerous  than 
ever. 

Then  came  real  darkness  and  the  tail-light  of  the 
car  would  not  burn;  it  was  a  new  lamp  and  the  oil 
seemed  to  have  been  shaken  out ;  and  we  crossed  over 
a  bridge  and  were  chased  by  a  man  for  sixpence,  not 
having  noticed  in  the  dark  that  it  was  a  toll-bridge, 
and  the  man  went  back,  panting,  with  his  bit  of 
silver,  and  a  policeman  called  out  a  friendly  warning 
about  our  light,  and  a  cyclist  wheeled  by  and,  leaning 
his  hand  on  the  car,  friendlily  told  us  that  our  light 
was  out,  and  friendly  voices  came  from  friendly  lovers 
to  tell  us  that  the  light  was  out;  and  it  was  after  a 
day's  run  of  just  eighty  miles  that  we  slipped  into 
crowded  Shoreham  and  had  to  go  to  hotel  after  hotel 
before  we  could  find  one  that  had  rooms. 

It  was  an  English  Sunday  night  and  drinking  was 
going  busily  on  all  over  the  town,  and  in  every  case 


158 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAI:N^ 

the  drink  was  served  across  the  bars  by  young  women. 
Even  fathers  with  young  daughters  went  right  into 
the  drinking  shops,  and  there  were  more  mysterious- 
seeming  rooms  and  entrances  than  would  be  deemed 
respectable  in  America.  Our  own  hotel  was  just  like 
the  rest,  and  the  landlady  herself  helped  the  young 
woman  at  the  bar,  for  business  was  so  brisk. 

But  next  morning  the  hotel  and  the  landlady  and 
everj^thing  seemed  ultra-quiet  and  respectable.  After 
all,  travelers  must  be  ready  to  make  allowances;  for, 
other  countries,  other  manners,  and  it  is  quite  likely 
that  things  were  not  nearly  so  bad  as  they  seemed; 
although  such  a  system  cannot  exist  all  over  a  coun- 
try without  being  quite  bad  enough.  Next  morning 
it  was  a  pleasant  little  run  along  the  coast  to 
Brighton. 

Brighton  greatly  surprised  us.  We  had  antici- 
pated a  place  of  noisy  cockneyism,  but  found  it  all 
quite  reserved  and  agreeable,  with  comfortable  and 
dignified  living  in  blocks  of  spacious  houses  facing 
seaward,  and  with  the  great  shingly  and  gravelly  but 
sandless  beach  lined  with  the  funny  little  bathing 
wagons  in  which  England  loves  to  be  wheeled  into 
the  water,  and  the  water  itself  gay  with  little  row- 
boats  and  fishing  smacks.  The  town  seems  all  cream- 
white,  as  to  its  buildings,  owing  largely  to  the  natu- 
ral color  of  the  prevalent  building  stone  and  largely 
to  paint — and  painters  are  a  very  real  thing  in  Brigh- 
ton, for  leaning  against  many  of  the  houses  we  saw 
painters'  ladders  fully  five  stories  in  height,  the  long- 
est ladders  we  have  ever  seen,  very  slender,  and  bow- 
ing in  the  middle  by  their  own  weight.  There  are 
attractive  public  piers  and  there  are  superb  roads 
along  the  waterfront  and  a  long  cement  walk  instead 
of  one  of  boards,  and  behind  the  sea-facing  houses  is 
a  great  tangle  of  streets,  where  there  are  excellent 
shops  for  flowers  and  lace  and  silver  and  antiques. 


ROUTE  OF  THE  COyQUEROR 159 

and  where  one  sees  hustling  householders  and  women 
of  landlady  types  busily  buying  attractive-looking 
food. 

Nowhere  was  there  anything  unpleasant  or  noisy, 
nowhere  did  there  seem  to  be  meagerness  of  living, 
everywhere  there  was  absence  of  nerve-rack;  and 
dowagers  were  placidly  looking  at  the  ocean  and  chil- 
dren with  buckets  were  pleasantly  playing  along  the 
beach  and  everybody  seemed  to  be  happy,  although 
nobody  seemed  to  be  doing  anything  in  particular; 
and  there  was  now  and  then  the  red  flash  of  a  sol- 
dier's coat — and  red  does  always  look  so  well  beside 
the  sea! 

The  buildings  in  Brighton  are  not  very  old,  but  it 
is  pleasant  to  think  that  large  part  of  them  are  suffi- 
ciently so  to  make  the  place  essentially  much  the  same 
Brighton  as  the  Brighton  of  "  The  Newcomes  "  and 
of  other  well-known  English  books. 

One  of  the  curious  things  in  England  is  the  way 
in  which  it  loves  to  attach  queer  names  to  decent 
places,  and  this  reflection  comes  as  we  motor  on  and 
into  the  little  seaside  village  of  Rottingdean,  where 
Kipling  so  long  lived;  and  we  find  his  house  unex- 
pectedly far  back  from  the  sea,  with  a  view  into  an 
unkempt  green,  a  bare,  dirty  duck-pond  which  is 
really  an  enlarged  puddle,  and  a  graveyard.  And  the 
front  gate  of  the  once-while  Kipling  house  was 
boarded  tight,  because  people  used  to  stand  and  look 
in.  A  much  prettier  sight  than  that  of  his  home  was 
that  of  a  cluster  of  little  children  doing  out-of-door 
wand  exercises  in  the  yard  of  the  Rottingdean  school- 
house.  One  wonders  how  Kipling  could  have  been 
content  in  such  a  place  after  knowing  so  many  places 
more  beautiful  (including,  may  Americans  be  per- 
mitted to  say,  Vermont?),  but  the  neighborhood  does 
have  compensations,  for  in  a  moment  after  leaving 
the  village  a  great  view  of  the  sea  comes  in  sight  and 


160 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAUNf 

of  fine  cliffs,  grassed  to  their  edges,  which  go  drop- 
ping down,  all  white,  to  the  sea  at  their  base.  And 
one  remembers  that  it  is  Kiphng  who  somewhere 
sings : 

**  Nor  I  don't  know  which  I  love  the  most, 
The  Weald,  the  Marsh,  or  the  White  Chalk  Coast." 

There  are  great,  bare,  hilly  downs  back  of  the  white 
cliffs,  and  we  went  over  them  in  miles  of  sweeping 
rolls,  and  we  mounted  and  mounted  behind  the 
great  promontory  of  Beachy  Head  up  an  ascent  ex- 
tremely long  and  solitary,  and  far  down  at  the  left, 
in  a  hollow  in  the  downs,  and  set  in  the  middle  of 
a  sheep  farm,  was  a  mullion-windowed  house  with  its 
roofs  most  picturesquely  yellowed  with  lichens,  and 
through  a  cleft  that  looked  far  down  on  the  other  side 
was  the  red  city  of  Eastbourne,  set  in  a  low-lying 
plain. 

We  noticed  as  we  went  through  this  town  a  tre- 
mendous number  of  nurses  in  costumes;  surely 
enough  to  care  for  all  the  sick  in  England!  and  we 
saw  them  always  in  couples  and  they  all  were  dressed 
in  blue  capes  to  their  feet  and  they  all  wore  blue  bon- 
nets with  little  string-ties.  We  came  afterwards  to 
know  that  such  costumed  nurses  are  scattered  through 
all  England,  although  not  in  such  profusion  as  here, 
and  have  almost  wondered  whether  all  of  them  were 
really  nurses  or  if  a  good  many  young  women  do 
not  choose  the  costume  for  its  fetchingness.  For 
where  in  this  healthy-seeming  England  could  so  many 
nurses  find  their  sick! 

A  traveler  is  apt  to  feel,  when  approaching  a  spot 
where  some  tremendous  event  took  place,  that  there 
should  be  indications  of  the  tremendous  in  the  land- 
scape and  the  surroundings,  and  as  we  go  on  to 
Pevensey,  the  landing-place  of  William  the   Con- 


ROUTE  OF  THE  CONQUEROR 161 

queror,  only  five  miles  from  Eastbourne,  we  feel  that, 
although  there  is  nothing  quite  tremendous  enough  to 
fit  such  an  event,  the  approach  is  rather  satisfactory 
after  all,  for  as  we  pass  over  a  long  stretch  of  marshy 
level  bordering  the  sea  there  come  into  sight  six 
ancient  martello  towers,  all  standing  detached,  and 
all  most  pictorially  to  be  seen  at  the  same  time. 

Pevensey  Castle,  which  marks  the  place  where  he 
and  his  army  landed,  is  now  some  distance  back  from 
the  waterside,  for  the  sea  has  widely  receded  in  the 
centuries;  it  is  a  great  strong- walled  ruin,  with  a 
space  of  nine  acres  within  its  inclosures  and  with  tre- 
mendous walls  that  are  twenty  feet  in  thickness. 
Shortly  after  landing,  William  built  a  castle  here, 
using  largely  the  foundations  and  walls  of  a  Roman 
castle  built  on  the  same  spot  many  centuries  before 
his  time.  Some  of  William's  massive  towers  still 
remain,  and  the  ruin  is  bordered  by  a  moat  that  is 
still  full  of  water,  which  is  thick  with  rushes  and  bor- 
dered by  lush  grass.  There  is  a  little  village  of 
Pevensey,  hidden  clusteringly  against  the  walls  and 
the  towers,  and  there  is  an  ancient  and  much-used 
right-of-way  straight  through  the  castle-ruin. 

Nothing  could  be  more  effective,  as  a  final  touch 
before  we  left  Pevensey  and  turned  our  faces  toward 
the  battlefield  where  Normans  and  Saxons  met,  than 
to  see  a  noble  blue  heron  rise  from  beside  the  moated 
walls  and  fly,  slow,  stately  and  beautiful,  across  the 
ruins  and  out  over  the  martello-towered  flats. 

The  Battle  of  Hastings  was  not  fought  beside  the 
ancient  little  town  of  Hastings,  which  is  just  a  few 
miles  east  of  Pevensey,  but  at  a  place,  known  ever 
since  that  time  as  Battle,  which  is  something  less  than 
ten  miles  in  from  the  seashore. 

We  left  Pevensey  by  the  long  flats  over  which  Wil- 
liam and  his  army  marched  in  long  lines.  There 
seems  to  be  a  rather  general  impression  that  he  was 


162 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

merely  a  sort  of  Norman  pirate  with  a  handful  of 
men  who  fought  with  a  smallish  body  of  Saxons,  but 
he  was  really  a  powerful  ruler  when  he  sailed  to  con- 
quer England  and  his  force  numbered  well  over  sixty 
thousand  and  at  the  ensuing  battle  fully  thirty  thou- 
sand, of  both  sides,  were  left  dead  on  the  field. 

Leaving  the  flats  we  entered  a  rolling  country ;  and 
there  were  scattered  houses  with  roofs  of  thatch  or 
tile,  amid  great  masses  of  shrubs  and  greenery  and 
might}^  trees.  We  found  it  a  peculiarly  rich  and  pic- 
turesque region;  and  many  of  the  lichened,  mossy 
houses  have  windows  diamond-paned  in  lead,  and 
there  seem  to  be  miles  of  rhododendrons,  and  there 
are  houses  clapboarded  in  wood  such  as  we  have  seen 
nowhere  else  in  England,  such  houses  as  these  evi- 
dently having  been  the  pattern  from  which  the  early 
clapboarded  houses  of  America  were  built. 

We  passed  a  private  estate  at  the  edge  of  which 
several  large  trees  had  just  been  cut  down  and,  al- 
though our  minds  were  full  of  the  thoughts  of  the 
past,  we  could  not  but  be  interested  in  the  frugality 
and  skill  of  present-day  forestry,  for  the  wood  was 
all  carefully  piled  according  to  different  sizes,  large, 
medium  and  small,  and  even  to  the  fagots  and  the 
bark. 

Approaching  more  nearly  to  Battle,  the  trees  be- 
came great  masses,  parklike  in  character,  indicating 
what  must  have  been  the  general  nature  of  this  coun- 
try at  the  time  of  the  Norman  Conquest. 

Unexpectedly  we  find  that  the  land  has  been  gradu- 
ally rising  and  that  we  are  now  at  a  very  consid- 
erable height,  for  we  suddenly  come  to  a  ridge  from 
which  we  can  see,  eight  miles  away,  the  gleaming 
water  of  the  Channel  and  we  know  that  this  is  the 
spot  where  William  the  Conqueror  paused  to  look 
back  at  his  hundreds  of  ships  dotting  the  water.  But 
we  also  know  that  he  looked  at  his  ships  and  thought 


ROUTE  OF  THE  CONQUEROR 163 

of  Normandy  for  only  a  brief  moment,  because  in 
front  of  him  was  a  sight  still  more  profoundly 
interesting. 

What  we  see,  looking  ahead  from  this  height,  is  a 
great  valleylike  depression,  fertile,  and  now  sweet 
and  peaceful  in  the  extreme.  The  Conqueror  (but 
he  was  not,  thus  far,  the  Conqueror!)  saw  this  same 
great  hollowhke  expanse  and  beyond  it  he  caught 
sight  of  the  troops  of  Harold,  who  had  hastened  from 
their  battle  with  the  Danes  to  meet  this  Norman  in- 
vasion; and  he  caught  through  the  trees  the  glinting 
of  their  armor  and  arms. 

William  had  his  troops  thoroughly  in  hand  and 
promptly  descended  and  attacked  the  Saxons  and  the 
Battle  of  Hastings  began.  It  does  not  se^m  to  have 
been  much  of  a  planned  battle,  but  doubtless  such  a 
trained  soldier  as  William,  a  "  conqueror  born," 
handled  his  troops  with  order  and  care  and  made  it 
much  more  than  a  mere  onslaught. 

The  prosperous  little  village  of  Battle  arose  close 
to  the  battle-ground.  It  is  a  broad  and  single- 
streeted  village  which  gives  suggestions  of  delightful 
gardens  behind  its  closely-built  houses ;  and  beside  the 
village  and  approached  by  a  spacious  esplanade  which 
leads  to  ancient  towered  entrance  gates  so  admirable 
that  one  feels  that  they  must  really  be  the  most  satis- 
factory and  adequate  entrance  gates  in  England,  is 
the  place  (now  a  park  that  is  privately  owned)  where 
the  fiercest  of  the  struggle  raged  and  where  stands 
as  much  as  Time  and  restoration  have  left  of  the 
great  abbey  that  was  built  by  William  the  Conqueror 
himself  to  mark  the  very  spot  where  King  Harold  was 
killed. 

"  This  his  w'are  the  harrow  'it  'Arold  bin  the  bye  " 
— as  it  was  put  to  us  by  a  man  who  was  eager  to  show 
his  local  knowledge  and  did  so  with  an  astonishing 
displacement  of  "  h's." 


164 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

The  grounds  are  exquisitely  kept  and  the  old 
abbey  has  been  swept  and  garnished  and  rebuilt  into 
a  usable  mansion  of  the  present  day.  The  old  gate- 
house is  fascinating,  with  its  great  groined  arch  and 
its  gloomy  little  rooms  lit  by  the  cheerful  glowing  fire 
of  the  neat  courtesying  custodian  who  is  not  in  the 
least  depressed  by  the  prison  room  in  this  gate-house, 
but  on  the  contrary  shows  it  with  pride,  as  well  as 
a  hook  on  which  unfortunates  used  to  be  pendulously 
suspended. 

We  had  a  particularly  charming  and  very  short 
cross-country  run  of  a  few  miles,  picking  the  country 
lanes  almost  at  random,  to  ancient  Winchelsea.  And 
Winchelsea  is  an  adorable  town.  It  is  also  what  the 
English  call  a  "  decayed  "  town,  which  does  not  mean 
something  disagreeable,  but  a  town  intensely  pic- 
turesque. It  is  supposed  to  have  six  hundred  in- 
habitants, but  the  inhabitants  themselves  assure  you 
that  this  is  impossible  and  that  it  does  not  have  nearly 
so  many;  yet  it  is  officially  a  city,  with  a  mayor  and 
corporation.  This  once-while  seaport  has  gone 
through  many  vicissitudes;  it  has  had  hundreds  of 
houses  sink  into  the  sea,  it  has  had  the  sea  recede, 
leaving  a  great  green  plain ;  and  across  this  plain  we 
looked,  from  an  ancient  high-set  city  gate;  for  Win- 
chelsea is  perched  on  a  hill. 

We  arrived  at  Winchelsea  well  on  in  the  afternoon, 
with  the  full  expectation  of  going  on  farther  after 
seeing  it.  But  it  so  fascinated  us  that  we  decided 
to  stay  overnight;  we  ordered  our  dinner  at  an  ex- 
tremely adequate  inn  and  took  a  leisurely  ramble, 
and  we  rambled  about  again  after  dinner  and  went 
to  bed  after  seeing  the  fitful  flashing  of  distant 
Dungeness  light,  and  we  rambled  about  again  in  the 
morning,  for  it  is  a  town  that  grows  on  one.  It  has 
all  the  charm  of  the  ancient,  with  nothing  of  the  dis- 
agreeable, the  dilapidated  or  the  squalid.    Its  ancient 


ROUTE  OF  THE  CONQUEROR 165 

houses  are  exquisitely  felicitous  and  the  miracle  has 
been  achieved  by  newcomers,  who  have  felt  bound  to 
live  here  and  could  not  find  old  houses  to  buy  or  rent, 
of  building  a  few  delightful  modern  houses  which 
can  scarcely  be  told  from  the  old.  The  few  people 
who  get  acquainted  with  this  forgotten  place  love  to 
come  and  live  here ;  Ellen  Terry  lived  here  for  years 
in  a  quaintly  ancient  house  beside  the  town  gate  that 
looks  off  toward  the  sea. 

The  general  tone  of  the  place  is  one  of  spacious- 
ness, peace  and  comfort  to  a  degree  unusual  in  Eng- 
lish towns,  and  perhaps  it  should  be  added  that  it  is 
quiet,  well  ordered  and  restful,  with  nothing  what- 
ever of  the  bustle  of  town  life.  It  is  essentially  an 
aristocratic  town. 

In  whichever  direction  one  walks  or  wherever  one 
looks  there  is  something  of  picturesqueness  or  en- 
chantment, and  a  number  of  old  houses  are  of  the 
wooden  clapboards  already  noticed  in  this  general 
neighborhood;  and  when  we  looked  at  the  old  brick 
houses  we  had  an  odd  sensation  as  of  being  in  Wil- 
liamsburgh,  Virginia,  and  when  we  looked  at  the 
wooden  ones  we  thought  of  Deerfield,  Massachusetts, 
the  unexpectedly  wide  and  grass-bordered  streets  of 
Winchelsea  aiding  much  in  giving  such  impressions 
of  our  own  old  towns. 

We  see  anew  in  Winchelsea  that  England  has  color. 
A  house  of  1720,  for  example,  is  of  dull  red  brick 
with  black  headers,  and  is  built  directly  on  a  gray 
sidewalk  bordered  by  a  brown  road;  it  has  a  white 
doorstep  and  an  exquisite  white  door-frame  and  its 
window  casings  are  white  and  there  are  soft-blowing 
white  curtains  at  the  open  windows ;  an  ancient  black 
lantern  projects  from  the  dark-red  brick  of  a  corner 
and  the  walls  of  the  house  are  a  mellow  glory  with 
hundreds  of  roses,  white  and  yellow  and  red,  trained 
close  to  the  wall.    Another  house  has  its  lower  half 


166 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

a  mass  of  pale  green  ivy,  and  its  upper  half  stuccoed 
a  pale  cream,  and  its  roof  of  tile  has  been  lichened 
to  a  blackish  red. 

Everywhere  there  is  so  much  of  the  picturesque. 
You  see  old-time  clothes-presses  worked  with  their 
wooden  screws ;  you  see  rows  of  old  copper  in  the  clean 
Jdtchens;  you  see  an  old  woman  tending  her  little 
shop,  just  one  solitary  candle  flame  lighting  up  her 
face  with  Rembrandt-like  effect  in  the  darkness;  and 
you  see  a  tiny  shop  (and  this  behind  the  prosaical 
sign  of  "  General  Stores  ")  with  moss  and  flowers 
all  over  its  ancient  roof,  and  with  little  diamond- 
paned  casement  windows,  and  with  little  dormers  and 
long-weathered  tile  fronting  the  entire  second  story 
around  little  square  panes  of  leaded  glass; — and  as 
we  look  back,  in  memory,  at  the  place  we  do  not  re- 
member seeing  another  shop  there! 

The  ancient  roofed-in  fragment  of  a  church  is  here, 
which,  like  the  Cathedral  of  Siena,  never  was  com- 
pleted, and  the  incompleteness  of  this  church  indicates 
the  catastrophe  of  the  end  of  prosperity;  and  along 
the  side  of  the  interior  lie  stone  Crusaders  sleeping 
through  the  centuries  under  ancient  fretted  canopies 
of  stone. 

We  have  seen  few  church  interiors  more  impressive. 
The  door  is  left  open — ^no  one  does  wrong  in  Win- 
chelsea! — and  so  the  church  is  yours.  But  you  have 
printed  permission  to  drop  a  coin  in  a  box  to  aid 
in  the  care  of  the  building  and  you  are  trusted  to 
leave  a  penny  or  so  to  pay  for  the  little  descriptive 
leaflet  of  the  church. 

This  is  the  only  church  we  have  seen  in  which  still 
stands  the  "family  pew";  a  paneled-oak  pew, 
shoulder-high  in  front,  higher  at  the  back,  set  against 
the  wall  and  entered  through  a  high  tight  door ;  it  is 
lined  inside  with  baize,  and  has  kneeling-chairs  and 
footstools  and  a  long  seat  and,  around  the  inner  side 


HOUTE  OF  THE  CONQUEROR 167 

of  it,  a  bench.     It  is  a  place  in  which  the  "  family  " 
have  been  set  apart  for  generations. 

Park  gates  at  the  upper  end  of  the  town,  with  per- 
fection of  care  as  to  grounds  and  trees,  indicate  that 
"  families  "  are  still  here,  and  indeed  all  the  land 
around  Winchelsea  is  owned  by  rich  folk  who  have 
agreed  among  themselves  to  buy  any  land  within  the 
town  that  comes  upon  the  market  rather  than  to 
admit  any  who  might  spoil  the  place.  For  others  as 
well  as  we  have  felt  the  charm  of  this  delectable 
place. 


CHAPTER  XVII 

A  NEW   CANTERBURY   PILGRIMAGE 

AT  picturesque  Winehelsea  we  did  a  very  prac- 
tical thing,  for  all  four  of  us,  in  the  secluded 
'yard  of  the  inn,  busied  ourselves  with  pen- 
knives in  picking  out  pieces  of  flint  from  the  tires ;  we 
picked  out  over  thirty  and  filled  the  little  sharp  gashes 
with  cement.  The  roads  through  this  chalk  region 
are  all  of  flint,  hard  but  sharp  as  well,  and  lack  of 
attention  would  mean  ruin  for  the  tires. 

Descending  the  hill  from  Winehelsea,  always  asso- 
ciated in  the  imagination  with  the  Cinque  Ports,  we 
motored  across  two  miles  of  level  country  that  once 
was  sea  to  ancient  Rye,  which  actually  was  one  of  the 
Cinque  Ports  and  which  is  even  more  a  hill  town  than 
Winehelsea;  for  Rye  stands  upon  an  isolated  cone- 
shaped  hill  to  which,  as  to  the  hill  of  Winehelsea,  the 
sea  used  to  come  up.  Rye  still  has  much  of  its  old 
towers,  old  gates,  old  houses  remaining,  and  many 
such  houses  cuddle  around  the  base  of  the  rocky 
height,  as  well  as  line  the  important  upper  streets. 
Some  of  the  streets  are  so  steep  as  to  be  mere  passage- 
ways of  stone  steps,  and  from  one  of  the  low-town 
house-roofs  we  noticed  a  literal  ladder  going  straight 
up  to  the  high  street  of  the  town!  Rye  just  occupies 
the  hill  and  a  skirtlike  ruffle  around  its  base. 

Almost  immediately  after  leaving  Rye  we  ran  into 
what  was  called  a  military  road,  with  frequent  toll- 
gates  set  across  it  as  if  to  prove  that  there  are  actu- 
ally toll-roads  in  England;  we  passed  three  gates, 
each  charging  a  sixpence,  in  three  miles,  and  the  road 

168 


CANTERBURY  PILGRIMAGE 169 

was  not  particularly  good,  nor  had  there  been  diffi- 
culties in  construction.  It  amused  us,  too,  that  with 
a  marked  distrust  of  human  nature  each  keeper  kept 
his  gate  actually  locked  until  the  money  was  paid, 
although  one  keeper  did  say,  in  a  sort  of  ashamed 
aside,  that  his  gate  was  kept  locked  only  to  check 
"  blawsted  motorcycles,"  but  we  knew  that  he 
"  blawsted  "  the  motors  when  the  cyclists  were  there. 
This  was  the  only  public  road  with  toll-gates  that  we 
found  in  Great  Britain,  though  frequently  we  found 
toll-bridges  and  now  and  then  a  private  toll-road. 

Beyond  Rye  there  are  great  level  farms  and  pas- 
tures, with  only  scattered  homes  and  very  little  of 
either  fencing  or  hedging.  Right  across  these  levels 
runs  the  level  road.  The  sea  breeze  comes  in  fresh 
and  clear.  There  are  sheep  and  cattle  grazing. 
There  are  chickens  far  from  their  homes  and  convoys 
of  little  ducks.  There  are  dykes  and  watery  ditches. 
And  all  this  is  the  Walland  Marshes. 

Shortly  after  leaving  the  Walland  Marshes  we 
came  to  a  comfortable  farmhouse,  square-fronted, 
hip-roofed,  dormer-windowed,  with  a  garden  in  front 
inclosed  by  one  of  those  rare  things  in  England,  a 
wooden  picket  fence,  and  this  place  remains  in  our 
memory  as  more  than  merely  an  old  and  agreeable- 
looking  farmhouse,  for  it  marked  the  precise  point 
at  which  our  speedometer  registered  one  thousand 
miles  of  run. 

Now  and  then  there  was  a  cluster  of  houses,  and  a 
very  occasional  parish  church ;  there  were  broad  fields 
that  were  a  sheen  of  yellow  from  the  blossoms  of  tur- 
nips that  are  grown  for  the  sake  of  their  seeds,  which 
are  used  in  whiskey  making;  there  were  strange 
conical-topped,  round  towers  looking  like  extin- 
guishers, and  they  were  weather-blurred  into  beauty, 
and  of  sufficiently  fetching  shape,  if  far  enough  away, 
to  be  suggestive  of  French  chateaux,  but  in  reality 


170 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

they  were  only  the  typical  hop-drying  towers  of  this 
region.  We  passed  pollarded  willows,  and  houses 
and  barns  with  queer-framed  roofs  of  thatch  or  tile, 
and  we  came  to  a  little  village  with  a  mossy  old 
church  and  the  queerest  of  queer  windmills ;  for  wind- 
mills have  gradually  become  a  feature  of  the  land- 
scape. 

We  are  in  Kent,  and  are  running  through  a  happy 
region,  with  picturesqueness,  but  no  misery;  we  are 
running  along  a  perfect  and  almost  level  road, 
through  a  country  extremely  rich,  and  full  of  the 
memories  of  those  generations  of  men  who  made  the 
phrase  "  men  of  Kent "  a  synonym  for  bravery. 
Kent,  as  one  likes  to  remember,  even  held  sternly 
against  the  Conqueror  for  some  time  after  Hastings, 
and  it  is  pleasant  to  know  that  one  of  the  towns  of 
New  England  was  settled  by  "  three  hundred  men  of 
Kent." 

The  houses  are  attractive  and  comfortably  built, 
and  of  large  size,  and  we  pass  one  which  is  particu- 
larly attractive  because  of  the  fact  that  it  is  still  sur- 
rounded by  its  moat,  and  it  delightfully  brings  to 
mind  the  Shakespearean  felicity  of  the  "  moated 
grange." 

And  all  at  once  distant  towers,  miles  away,  glori- 
ously show  in  the  morning  sun,  and  they  are  noble 
and  dominating  towers,  and  we  know  that  we  are 
looking  at  the  superb  towers  of  Canterbury 
Cathedral! 

Beside  us  runs  a  brimming  river ;  a  phrase  that  has 
come  to  fascinate  us  by  its  charm  and  by  its  perfect 
descriptiveness,  and  like  many  another  of  the  brim- 
ming rivers  in  England  it  looks  as  if  it  would  sureh^ 
overflow  its  banks  if  there  were  the  slightest  shower ; 
we  pass  through  great  hop  fields  with  myriads  of  hop 
vines  on  poles  and  strings,  so  contrived  as  to  give 
the  vine  the  full  benefit  of  the  sun;  but  hop  fields. 


CANTERBURY  PILGRIMAGE 171 

river,  trees,  houses  and  even  the  city  of  Canterbury 
itself  when  we  finally  come  to  it,  all  sink  into  insig- 
nificance under  the  dominating  influence  of  the  tow- 
ers, which  are  not  only  splendid  and  impressive  in 
themselves,  but  have  all  the  dignity  and  mystery  of 
time  and  age. 

Close  at  hand  you  begin  to  gather  the  immensity  of 
the  mighty  structure,  one  of  the  greatest  and  most 
magnificent,  as  it  is,  of  all  the  English  cathedrals,  and 
you  marvel  at  the  immense  splendor  of  the  carved 
detail  and  at  the  same  time  the  might,  the  majesty, 
the  immensity  of  the  building  itself,  and  you  wander 
slowly  around  it,  stopping  to  view  it  now  from  this 
point  and  now  from  that,  and  you  wander  on  into 
fascinating  cloisters  and  among  ancient  buildings  and 
gardens  and  past  a  particularly  fascinating  Norman 
porch  that  is  many  centuries  old,  and  there  comes  a 
profound  impression  of  beauty  and  sweetness  as  well 
as  of  the  splendid  strength  that  has  lasted  for  ages. 
We  are  not  seeing  the  cathedral  in  a  hurried  and 
formal  way,  and  it  is  pleasant  to  wander  around  in- 
definitely for  a  time,  drinking  in  to  the  full  the  mag- 
nificence of  the  mighty  structure  and  the  fine  charm 
of  its  surroundings,  and  when  we  finally  come  back 
toward  the  main  entrance  we  notice  a  point  about  the 
cathedral  which  had  vaguely  impressed  us  at  our  first 
nearby  glimpse  of  it,  and  that  is  that  its  general  color 
is  a  sort  of  rich  dull  yellow.  It  is  one  of  the  curious 
things  about  cathedrals  that  they  so  differ  from  one 
another  in  general  coloring,  although  all  are  of  simi- 
larly time-weathered  stone. 

There  is  nothing  in  all  England  that  so  merges  and 
at  the  same  time  differentiates  the  centuries  of  Eng- 
lish history  as  does  Canterbury  Cathedral,  and  as  one 
steps  into  the  twilight  of  its  interior  and  goes  slowly 
up  and  down  its  solemn  aisles,  the  impression  comes 
of  all  the  centuries  united  in  one  grand  sweep,  and  at 


172 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

the  same  time  of  a  long,  long  line  of  individual  kings 
and  archbishops  and  of  their  separate  times. 

How  vivid  become  some  distant  great  events  that 
have  almost  seemed  to  be  mere  figments  of  fancy. 
Here  is  the  tomb  of  the  archbishop  who  took  the  lead 
in  raising  the  huge  ransom  demanded  to  free  the  cap- 
tive Richard  Coeur  de  Lion;  and  how  it  brings  up  the 
perfect  story  of  Blondel,  the  faithful  minstrel,  wan- 
dering through  Europe  until  he  found  the  prison 
place  of  his  master  and  getting  into  communication 
with  him  by  means  of  a  familiar  song!  And  here  is 
the  tomb  of  the  great  and  noble  archbishop  who,  fired 
by  the  wrongs  of  the  people,  took  the  part  of  the  ill- 
fated  Wat  Tyler  and,  as  a  consequence  of  thus  stand- 
ing bravely  against  tyranny  in  tyrannical  days,  lost 
his  head. 

The  majesty  of  the  interior  of  the  cathedral  is  con- 
siderably lessened  by  the  huge  stone  screen  which 
belittles  the  vista  by  cutting  it  in  two ;  but,  even  while 
regretting  this  loss  of  full  glory,  no  one  can  avoid 
feeling  the  impressiveness  and  beauty  and  majesty 
of  it  even  as  it  is. 

Everywhere  there  is  not  only  beauty,  there  is  not 
only  the  awesome  strength  and  impressiveness,  but 
there  is  also  the  constant  personal  touch  which  makes 
history  alive. 

Here  is  even  the  tomb  of  the  Black  Prince!  And 
there  is  scarcely  a  more  impressive  thing  in  England. 
Above  it  hangs  the  very  helmet  that  he  wore,  still 
with  the  long-tailed  leopard  on  its  top;  here  is  his 
painted  shield,  a  thing  of  fascination;  here  are  the 
very  gauntlets  that  he  drew  upon  his  hands  as  he 
advanced  upon  the  field  at  Poictiers.  Nothing  more 
marvelous  can  be  imagined  in  its  vivid  realization, 
in  its  vivid  making  alive  of  a  figure  that  has  always 
seemed  part  of  a  misty  dream  of  chivalry.  How  it 
summons  up  remembrance  of  things  past! 


A  Normal  porch  at  Canterbury 


Two    OF    THE    CHATEAU-LIKE    HOPTOWEBS   OF    KeNT 


The  ancient  Norman  castle  at  Rochester 


Chislehurst^  avhere  Napoleon  III  died 


CANTERBURY  PILGRIMAGE 173 

Notably,  in  this  cathedral,  one  over  and  over  again 
feels  himself  in  touch  with  the  vivid  happenings  of 
the  ages.  It  is  not  merely  a  mighty  place  of  carved 
and  built-up  stone,  but  it  is  full  of  the  personal  life 
of  the  great  events  of  the  past.  Why,  here  is  even  the 
very  spot  where  Thomas  a  Becket  was  murdered ;  it  is 
not  only  that  one  is  told  that  this  is  the  cathedral 
where  he  met  his  death,  but  that,  after  all  these  cen- 
turies, you  may  walk  through  the  very  doorway  where 
he  walked  to  his  death : — you  hear  the  frightened  dis- 
suasions of  his  monks,  and  you  see  him  go  proudly 
and  boldly  on,  and  you  stand  on  the  spot  where  he 
fell. 

All  this  is  more  than  history ;  it  is  the  visualization 
of  history.  Far  up  on  the  ceiling,  above  the  altar,  is 
a  golden  crescent;  a  little  thing,  not  often  noticed; 
that  tantalizes  and  fascinates  the  imagination.  For 
no  record  tells  when  it  was  put  there,  or  why,  or  even 
by  whom.  But  the  vague  tradition  is  undoubtedly 
true  which  links  it  with  Becket  as  a  reminder  of  his 
Saracen  blood  and  it  was  doubtless  put  there  by  the 
mighty  archbishop  himself,  for  none  else  would  have 
dared  to  place  a  Saracen  symbol  honorably  over  this 
Christian  altar.  For  Becket  was  the  son  of  a  Nor- 
man Crusader  who  won  the  love  of  the  daughter  of 
a  Saracen  prince,  but  she  was  hidden  away  from  him 
and  he  returned  heartbroken  to  England,  and  she  es- 
caped and  followed  him  and  reached  England,  know- 
ing only  the  two  words  "  Becket  "  and  "  London  " ; 
and  it  all  ended  romantically  just  as  a  fine,  old  love 
story  ought  to  end.  And  how  vivid  and  real  it  all 
seems  in  this  cathedral,  thus  forever  associated  with 
the  son  of  the  Saracen  woman! 

It  is  the  unhappy  fashion  of  the  present  time  to 
discourage  belief  in  any  romantic  old  tale;  it  is  the 
unhappy  fashion  to  assert  that  nothing  but  the  barest 
and  driest  happenings  of  history  could  possibly  be 


m TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

true;  forgetting  that  life  has  been  rich  in  romance 
ever  since  the  world  was  young. 

The  crypt  of  the  cathedral  is  a  magnificent  maze 
of  low  dark  arches  and  pillars,  and  there  is  a  chapel 
in  this  crypt  in  which  services  are  still  regularly  held 
by  the  descendants  of  the  Huguenots  who  fled  from 
France  at  the  Revocation  of  the  Edict  of  Nantes  and 
found  an  asylum  here  and  were  given  this  chapel  to 
be  forever  used  by  them  and  their  descendants. 

Canterbury  is  a  positively  marvelous  place  in  itself, 
holding  together  within  its  ancient  city  walls  such  a 
vast  variety  of  things  of  interest;  and  nothing  could 
be  said  more  expressive  of  the  dominating  power  of 
the  cathedral  than  that  it  so  dwarfs  everything  else 
that  a  visitor  is  likely  to  leave  Canterbury  with  the 
idea  that  there  really  is  nothing  besides  the  cathedral 
that  is  particularly  worth  while,  whereas  in  reality 
there  are  charm  and  interest  on  every  hand.  The 
town  walls  and  gates  would  in  themselves  draw  at- 
tention to  any  other  city;  and  there  are  fascinating 
corners,  and  ancient  buildings,  and  survivals  of  old- 
time  crafts  such  as  that  of  the  Canterbury  weavers, 
and  there  is  a  baptistry  that  is  itself  of  sufficient 
beauty  to  attract  visitors  from  all  England,  and  there 
are  even  literary  associations  of  unusual  interest,  for 
Dickens  located  some  of  his  best  scenes  in  this  ancient 
place,  and  one  should  never  forget  that  this  was  the 
town  of  the  author  of  those  fine  old  lines,  "  To  Lu- 
casta,  on  going  to  the  wars,"  ending  with  that  bril- 
liant flash  of  bravery  and  sentiment :  "  I  could  not 
love  thee.  Dear,  so  much,  loved  I  not  Honor  more." 

Canterbury  has  all  the  air  of  a  show  place,  as  if 
the  people  are  not  living  their  own  natural  lives, 
as  in  such  cathedral  towns  as  Salisbury  and  Worces- 
ter, but  are  living  lives  for  visitors;  but  in  spite  of 
this  one  cannot  but  get  a  very  fine  and  most  satis- 
factory impression  of  the  town,  and  certainly  there 


CANTERBURY  PILGRIMAGE 175 

are  ample  reason  and  excuse,  if  excuse  were  deemed 
necessary,  for  this  attitude  on  the  part  of  the  people, 
for  Canterbury  has  been  a  point  of  pilgrimage  for 
countless  thousands,  during  the  centuries  when  every- 
one pilgrimaged,  as  did  Chaucer's  immortal  creations, 
to  worship  at  the  tomb  of  Becket,  and  during  these 
more  recent  generations  when  people  have  pil- 
grimaged there  on  account  of  historical  and  archi- 
tectural interest. 

But  even  in  such  a  place  as  Canterbury  motorists 
cannot  remain  forever,  nor  even  for  an  entire  sum- 
mer; and  perhaps  a  long  and  continued  familiarity 
would  begin  to  weaken  the  vividlj^  splendid  impres- 
sion that  comes  from  a  visit  of  a  few  hours;  and  so 
we  start  on  our  way  again,  heading  toward  London, 
for  this  is  our  farthest  point  east  for  the  entire 
journey. 

We  reached  Rochester  after  twenty-five  miles  of  a 
run  that  is  rather  featureless,  but  which  is  lightened 
and  brightened  by  occasional  glimpses  of  the  water 
of  the  North  Sea  and  of  the  waters  of  the  Swale. 
In  Rochester  we  scarcely  looked  at  the  cathedral,  for 
even  though  we  had  not  just  left  Canterbury  it  would 
really  demand  very  little  attention.  Far  more  im- 
pressive is  the  mighty  castle  ruin,  of  great  extent  and 
height,  which  frowns  over  the  city  with  immense  dig- 
nity; it  is  really  a  most  satisfactory  ruin  in  its  gen- 
eral effectiveness,  especially  when  one  realizes  that  it 
carries  the  weight  of  eight  hundred  years.  The  city 
of  Rochester  bought  this  ruin  from  its  owner  and 
preserves  it  in  the  center  of  a  public  park,  where 
babies  and  seagulls  are  always  walking  in  the  paths. 
The  city  has  also  purchased,  and  preserves  as  a  most 
charming  local  museum,  the  old-time  Elizabethan 
house  which  figures  as  the  Nuns'  House  in  "  Ed^vin 
Drood."  A  particular  charm  of  this  house  is  that, 
although  it  is  not  palatial  and  not  depressingly  large. 


176 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

it  is  at  the  same  time  distinctly  not  humble ;  this  was 
the  fine,  large  town-house  of  some  well-to-do  towns- 
man of  the  past;  there  are  very  few  houses  like  it  in 
England  and  it  has  a  thorough  aspect  of  livability; 
it  could  be  comfortably  lived  in  to-day,  with  its  waxed 
floors,  its  little  window-seats,  its  paneling,  and  with 
its  numberless  little  features  of  interest  it  is  a  very 
delightful  place,  indeed. 

Two  miles  or  so  outside  of  Rochester,  and  ap- 
proached by  a  highly  unattractive  and  even  de- 
pressing road  that  leads  up  a  bare  black  hill  and  then 
on  through  a  monotonous  district,  is  Gad's  Hill,  fa- 
mous through  its  associations  with  Falstaff  and 
Prince  Hal,  and  also  famous  through  Dickens  hav- 
ing chosen  the  spot  for  his  home  for  the  last  dozen 
years  of  his  life. 

Facing  the  brick  house  which  Dickens  bought  to 
live  in,  the  "  grave  red-brick  house,"  as  he  himself 
describes  it,  and  which  he  supposed  to  be  of  the  time 
of  George  the  First,  is  a  very  unattractive  ale-house 
with  the  very  attractive  title  of  the  "  Sir  John  Fal- 
staff ";  and,  astonishing  though  it  seems,  this  inn  was 
here  long  before  Dickens  located  at  the  place,  be- 
cause he  refers  to  it  himself  in  describing  to  a  friend 
the  home  he  had  bought. 

Clipped  lime  trees  stand  before  the  house,  and  it 
is  separated  from  the  road  by  a  ditch  and  a  high- 
spiked  wall  with  a  solid  gate.  The  house  is  not  alto- 
gether unattractive,  even  though,  as  Dickens  himself 
expresses  it,  he  added  to  and  stuck  bits  upon  it  in 
all  sorts  of  ways,  and  at  least  it  has  a  hospitable- 
looking  entrance  and  there  is  somewhat  of  a  pleasant 
impression  of  elms  and  corn-fields  and  greenery  in 
the  open  spaces  behind  it. 

But  that  Dickens,  when  a  rich  man,  able  to  live 
practically  where  he  pleased,  should  deliberately 
choose  a  place  approached  by  a  disagreeable  road. 


CANTERBURY  PILGRIMAGE 177 

directly  in  front  of  an  ale-house,  seems  to  indicate 
the  possession  of  qualities  that  explain  why,  in  spite 
of  his  marvelous  genius,  he  never  attracted  the  per- 
sonal liking  of  the  people  whose  personal  liking  was 
most  worth  while. 

It  is  very  surprising  indeed  that  this  is  neither 
London,  that  he  loved,  nor  the  country,  of  which  he 
always  felt  the  charm,  nor  the  seashore,  that  never 
ceased  to  appeal  to  him.  That  he  wrote,  while  here, 
a  book  titled  by  a  name  almost  identical  with  that 
of  the  keeper  of  the  Falstaff  Inn,  Edwin  Trood,  is 
remindful  that  he  established  rather  confidential  rela- 
tions between  his  own  house  and  this  inn  and  regu- 
lated the  consumption  of  beer  by  his  servants  on  a 
plan  that  was  all  his  own. 

After  a  run  of  four  or  five  miles  from  Gad's  Hill, 
we  came  to  Gravesend,  on  the  Thames,  the  famous 
port  of  London,  a  busy  place,  with  Lascars  and  sol- 
diers giving  touches  of  interest  to  the  prosaic  streets. 
We  stayed  there  all  night,  and  from  our  hotel  win- 
dows watched  the  blue  dusk  creep  over  the  ship-dotted 
water  and  red  and  white  and  green  lights  go  gleam- 
ing about  in  the  later  darkness,  and  we  listened  to 
the  low  swashing  of  the  rising  tide;  receiving  thus  a 
quiet  sort  of  an  impression  for  such  a  busy  place,  but 
it  was  probably  because  we  were  in  the  mood  for  a 
quiet  impression,  for  Gravesend  means  to  Americans 
the  place  where  Pocahontas  died. 

And  the  broad  Thames  brought  memories  of  the 
far  broader  and  more  glorious  sweeps  of  the  James, 
and  we  remembered  the  place  where  she  and  Rolfe 
had  made  their  home.  And  how  far  away  must  all 
that  have  seemed  to  poor  Pocahontas,  dying  here  in 
Gravesend;  and  how  she  must  have  longed  for  the 
wild  freedom  of  it  all! 

She  was  about  to  sail  from  Gravesend  when  she 
fell  sick  and  died,  and  she  was  buried  under  the 


178 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

chancel  of  an  old  church  to  which  we  motored  in  the 
morning.  The  church  stands  in  the  midst  of  a  com- 
monplace and  even  highly  unattractive  part  of  the 
town,  and  has  been  so  altered  as  to  give  outwardly 
little  promise  of  interest,  but  the  interior  is  plain 
and  dignified,  and  locked  in  a  safe  in  the  church  wall 
is  kept  an  old  vellum  book  wrapped  in  oil-skin,  and  it 
is  reverently  taken  out  and  shown  to  us,  and  it  is  the 
original  church  record  of  the  1600's;  and  we  looked 
with  profound  interest  at  the  entry,  in  old-fashioned 
textlike  writing,  made  at  the  time  of  the  burial,  set- 
ting forth  that  "  Rebecca  Wrolfe,  wyffe  of  Thomas 
Wrolfe,  a  Virginia  lady  borne,"  was  buried  "  in  ye 
chauncell "  on  March  21,  1616. 

We  followed  the  road  a  few  miles  farther  in  the 
direction  of  London  and  it  became  so  much  more  an 
unpleasant  and  uninteresting  road  as  to  be  worth 
while  seeing  for  the  sake  of  learning  how  uninter- 
esting London  suburban  living  can  be  made.  And 
this  seemed  the  more  surprising  because  this  road 
that  we  had  followed  for  miles  is  Watling  Street,  one 
of  the  most  famous  roads  in  all  the  world ;  a  road  built 
by  the  Romans ;  a  road  over  which  practically  every- 
body has  traveled: — Julius  Csesar  himself,  the  Em- 
peror Hadrian  who  built  the  famous  Villa,  Arthur 
and  his  knights.  King  Alfred,  William  the  Conqueror, 
and  a  long,  long  line  of  the  great  and  humble.  It 
gives  one  a  curious  feeling  to  think  of  traveling  along 
a  road  like  this,  that  has  been  traveled  over  for  so 
many,  many  centuries,  for  it  so  marvelously  repre- 
sents antiquity  and  historical  associations. 

Reaching  Dartford,  which  was  the  home  of  Wat 
Tyler,  we  aimed  in  a  general  southern  way,  in  a  line 
of  most  agreeable  zigzags,  through  a  country  rich  in 
gardens  and  in  villas,  in  beautiful  contrast  to  what 
we  had  just  been  seeing.  We  went  past  the  spacious, 
modern  home  of   Chislehurst,  where  the  Emperor 


CANTERBURY  PILGRIMAGE 179 

Napoleon  the  Third  died,  and  where  the  Empress 
Eugenie  lived  for  many  years,  and  finally  came  to 
the  little  village  of  Sevenoaks  (one  really  cannot  help 
thinking  of  Bret  Harte's  irreverent  "  Seven  Oaks, 
and  then  Sennoak,  lastly  Snook").  Here  we  mo- 
tored up  the  long  and  quiet  street  and  turned  off  at 
an  almost  unnoticeable  entrance  just  between  two 
village  houses,  and  after  a  short  run  down  this  lane 
came  to  the  entrance  gate  of  Knole  House  and  drove 
through  its  splendid  park,  noticing  as  we  passed  the 
largest  beech  in  England,  the  "  King  Beech,"  with 
its  wonderful  twenty-nine  feet  of  circumference,  and 
stopped  at  the  front  of  the  superb  mansion. 

Rich  as  England  is  in  noble  and  stately  homes, 
none  is  superior  to  Knole.  It  is  the  noblest  baronial 
house  in  England ;  not  a  fortified  or  castlelike  place, 
but  a  noble  home  standing  almost  unchanged  since 
the  times  of  the  early  Stuarts,  and  lived  in  uninter- 
ruptedly to  the  present  day.  It  is  waxed  and  pol- 
ished and  in  perfect  condition,  and  furnished  with 
priceless  portraits  of  old-time  masters  of  the  place, 
by  old-time  masters  of  painting  such  as  Van  Dyck 
and  Lely  and  Holbein,  and  it  is  superb  in  glorious 
silver  and  tapestry  and  furniture  of  the  past.  There 
are  four  acres  of  house.  The  building  is  set  extraor- 
dinarily close  to  the  ground,  and,  although  of  great 
area,  it  is  of  low  and  felicitous  height.  The  halls, 
the  galleries,  the  bedrooms  are  models  of  stately  com- 
fort and  are  exquisite  in  charm.  No  other  house 
seems  to  us  to  express  so  finely  the  grand  scale  of 
English  aristocratic  living,  and  at  the  same  time  to 
do  this  with  likeableness  and  lack  of  ostentation;  for 
it  has  nothing  whatever  of  the  arrogance  of  mere 
w^ealth,  but  with  quiet  restraint  and  distinction  shows 
such  things  as  only  wealth  can  build  and  gather. 

It  is  really  wonderful  that  the  owner  of  such  a 
noble  home  and  of  the  exquisite  things  which  it  con- 


180 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

tains  permits  the  public,  three  days  in  the  week,  for 
the  payment  of  only  such  a  small  fee  as  keeps  out  the 
merely  curious,  to  walk  through  these  noble  rooms 
and  halls. 

From  Knole  House  we  went  by  indirect  roads, 
through  a  region  of  charming  villas,  to  Bromley 
in  the  close  outskirts  of  London,  and  there  the  car 
was  left  at  a  garage,  whose  address  had  been  given 
us  some  time  before,  for  overhauling  and  the  clean- 
ing out  of  carbon ;  and  we  took  a  train  for  London. 

For  it  was  never  part  of  our  intention  to  motor  up 
and  down  in  London.  We  merely  wished  to  spend 
a  few  pleasant  days  there,  and  we  knew  that  the  taxi- 
cab,  the  motor-bus  and  the  Underground  would  take 
us  about  the  crowded  streets  of  the  crowded  city, 
without  possible  trouble  or  worry,  and  with  vastly 
more  satisfaction  than  could  possibly  be  attained  with 
one's  own  car. 

Thus  far  we  had  been  extremely  fortunate,  in  hav- 
ing neither  accidents  nor  delays,  and,  as  one  of  us 
remarked,  we  could  understand  the  feelings  of  the 
man  who,  falling  from  a  high  building,  called  out  to 
a  friend  at  a  window  that  he  was  "  all  right  so  far." 


The  old  Dutch  gardex  at  Hamptox  Court 


The  level  plaix  of  Runnimede 


Houseboats  ox  the  Thames 


Seeing  the  King  and  Queen  at  Windsor 


CHAPTER  XVIII 

THE   VALLEY   OF   THE   THAMES 

WE  found  to  our  astonishment  that  we  were, 
within  a  very  few  days,  willing  to  leave 
London;  that  indeed  we  were  glad  to  leave 
London!  It  was  not  that  we  undervalued  its  im- 
portance, its  greatness,  its  various  and  varied  inter- 
ests ;  it  was  not  that  we  really  wearied  of  its  shops,  its 
theaters,  its  restaurants;  nor  was  it  merely  because 
we  already  knew  London  fairly  well,  for  when  one 
comes  to  know  a  fine  city  he  is  likely  to  love  it  the 
more  on  better  and  better  acquaintance.  But  we 
were  eager  to  go  away  from  London,  because  of  the 
insistent  call  of  the  road,  and  we  found  ourselves 
longing  again  for  the  fresh,  keen  air,  the  bright  sun- 
shine, the  country  lanes  and  homes,  the  swift,  fine 
motion  of  travel.  And  so  we  took  train  again  to 
Bromley  and  found  the  car  washed  and  polished  and 
shining  like  new,  and  the  cylinders  cleaned,  and 
everything  ready  for  us  to  start,  and  we  spread  our 
rugs  and  settled  our  feet  beside  the  bags  and  drew 
great  breaths  of  contentment  to  be  our  own  masters 
again  and  once  more  on  our  way.  The  car  gave  us 
the  feeling  as  of  getting  back  home! 

From  the  first  moment  after  leaving  Bromley  all 
was  a  pleasure,  for  we  were  at  once  in  a  region  of 
pleasant  homes  and  pleasant  living;  but  it  rather 
amused  us  that  for  a  long  time  we  seemed  to  be  pur- 
sued on  our  right  by  the  looming  glitter  of  that  big 
Crystal  Palace,  at  Sydenham,  which  was  erected  over 
a  half  a  century  ago  and  dominates  all  this  section 

181 


182 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

of  suburban  London  as  a  glassy  example  of  bad 
taste. 

We  were  aiming  for  Kingston,  to  cross  the  river 
there  for  Hampton  Court  and  Windsor  before  swing- 
ing northward  into  splendid  central  England,  and 
there  was  necessarily  a  good  deal  of  zigzagging  as 
to  roads,  and  more  or  less  of  rather  ordinary  suburban 
life  alternating  with  the  finer  kind. 

We  passed  through  Wimbledon  and  just  skirted 
Wimbledon  Common,  which  is  strangely  remindful 
of  fine  Long  Island  living — and  we  gained  the  im- 
pression that  it  is  much  better  form  to  live  on  the 
Common  than  in  plain  Wimbledon — and  we  came  to 
Kingston-on-the-Thames,  with  its  ancient  king's 
stone  which  out-claims  that  of  Scone  as  to  antiquity 
of  Idng-crowning ;  and  we  found  Kingston  an  as^ree- 
able  place,  with  a  very  great  deal  of  the  very  old,  but 
most  of  it  was  so  fresh  with  paint  and  prosperity  as 
to  seem  pretty  and  new,  and  we  found  passageways 
with  queer,  quaint  gables,  and  in  a  draper's  shop,  and 
in  constant  daily  use,  we  came  upon  an  ancient  and 
beautiful  oak  staircase  really  fit  for  a  palace,  and  we 
happened  upon  an  "  odditorium,"  a  delightful  name 
adopted  by  a  very  shabby  shop  in  a  very  narrow  lane 
where  we  found  some  very  attractive  bits  of  old  silver 
and  china,  and  we  came  into  a  market-square,  quaintly 
built  about,  and  notably  pretty  with  masses  of  flow- 
ers and  little  baskets  of  strawberries  and  green,  clean 
vegetables,  and  so  alive  with  market  women  and  girls, 
as  rosy  and  blossoming  as  their  wares,  that  marketing 
at  such  a  market  could  not  but  be  pleasurable. 

For  a  mile  or  so  we  motored  along  a  road,  high- 
walled  on  both  sides,  to  the  Lion  Gate  of  Hampton 
Court,  and  we  looked  for  a  place  to  leave  the  car, 
and  there  was  no  garage  in  sight,  but  a  friendly  po- 
liceman offered  to  "  put  an  eye  on  it "  for  a  consid- 
eration accepted  but  in  no  way  suggested.     And 


THE  VALLEY  OF  THE  THAMES  188 

through  the  Lion  Gate  we  entered  the  grounds  of 
Hampton  Court,  and  went  on  by  a  pleasant  walk 
through  a  remarkable  maze,  and  between  avenued 
yews  that  are  huge,  fine  and  venerable. 

There  are  acres  and  acres  of  blooming  flowers,  in 
every  imaginable  color  and  glory,  and  mighty  trees 
carpeted  underneath  with  the  greenest  of  ivy  instead 
of  with  grass,  and  great  stretches  of  lawn;  and  near- 
ing  the  old  brick  palace  are  gardens  of  peculiar  per- 
fection, gardens  that  are  the  pride  and  glory  of  a 
nation  of  flower  lovers,  and  vistaed  avenues  stretch 
nobly  away  from  the  front  of  the  palace.  Planned 
by  William  and  Mary's  Dutch  gardeners,  these  ave- 
nues stretch  away  in  the  form  of  a  mighty  "  W,"  and 
there  comes  the  suggestion  that,  if  we  could  view 
these  from  the  other  direction,  we  should  see  them 
as  the  initial  "  M." 

The  front  of  the  palace,  itself  built  by  William, 
is  of  a  soft-colored  rosy  brick  and  a  buff-gray  stone ; 
it  is  of  much  dignity,  but  the  extensive  remains  of  the 
earlier  Tudor  portion  of  Henry  the  Eighth  and  Wol- 
sey,  also  of  soft-colored  brick  and  with  black  headers, 
shows  how  glorious  a  brick  palace  may  be  when  its 
architect  is  a  very  artist  in  building. 

The  interior  of  the  palace  leaves  an  impression  of 
great  courts,  of  grand  staircases,  of  rooms  of  oak, 
of  Grinling  Gibbons  festoons,  of  the  grand  great 
halls,  of  the  little  Wolsey  closet  with  its  linen-pattern 
panels,  and  of  myriad  paintings  of  court  beauties, 
of  maids  of  honor  and  maids  of  dishonor,  forever 
smihng  and  simpering  and  gay  on  the  walls  as  they 
were  smiling  and  gay  and  simpering  in  these  very 
halls  and  rooms,  and  there  are  portraits  of  royalties, 
courtiers,  statesmen,  lordly  nobles  and  beautiful  ladies 
who  lived  and  loved  and  planned  and  hoped  and  in- 
trigued and  gossiped  in  this  very  palace  generations 
ago.    The  many  portraits  of  the  people  so  associated 


184 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

with  this  very  building  and  with  English  history  give 
a  vividly  human  touch  to  it  all.  It  ceases  to  be  merely 
a  show-place,  with  a  great  extent  of  rooms  open  to 
the  public,  and  becomes  a  veritable  bit  of  the  past, 
filled  once  more  with  currents  of  swift-pulsing  human 
Hfe. 

And  this  vivid  impression  of  the  past  is  delight- 
fully added  to  by  seeing  veritable  old  Delft  and 
veritable  old  tapestry  and  beds  and  clocks  and  mir- 
rors still  kept  in  the  various  rooms  in  this  largest  of 
English  palaces ;  not  gathered  here  for  show,  all  these 
things  now  so  preciously  old,  but  kept  in  the  very 
rooms  in  which  they  were  placed  so  long  ago, 
direct  from  the  hands  of  their  makers. 

We  went  through  Hampton  Court  with  a  friend 
who,  living  but  a  few  miles  away,  has  come  to  know 
every  nook  and  corner  in  the  course  of  years  of  lov- 
ing visits  here,  and  every  bit  of  its  romance  and  his- 
tory, and  with  such  a  companion  the  entire  place 
became  vivified  indeed.  But  the  motorist  cannot  re- 
main forever  even  in  such  a  place  of  fascination  as 
this,  and  so  with  a  final  glance  at  the  charming  Tudor 
exterior  and  a  final  look  at  the  greenery  and  a  glimpse 
into  an  odd,  little  sunken  garden  which  is  not  Italian 
but  Dutch  and  has  little  fat  Cupids — little  Dutch 
loves!— in  lead,  and  birds  of  clipped  box,  and  a  little 
fountain,  and  a  marble  lady  placed  at  the  far  end 
as  if  to  show  that  even  the  Dutch  could  not  have  a 
sunken  garden  without  something  Italian,  we  are 
on  our  way  again. 

The  entrance  of  a  great  park  known  as  Bushy  Park 
faces  the  Lion  Gate  of  Hampton  Court,  and  this 
park  is  open  to  motors,  and  it  was  most  agreeable 
to  drive  in  and  circle  about  there  for  a  little,  for  the 
avenues  have  been  so  planned  as  to  make  great  vistas 
in  the  manner  of  France,  and  there  are  deer  loitering 
sedately  about  that  are  surely  the  tamest  deer  in  all 


THE  VALLEY  OF  THE  THAMES  185 

the  world,  and  there  is  a  general  agreeable  impres- 
sion of  water  and  greenery. 

Leaving  Bushy  Park  and  Hampton  Court,  we  fol- 
lowed a  road  along  the  Thames  and  soon  our  minds 
were  busied  with  one  of  the  greatest  happenings  of 
all  history,  for  we  were  on  our  way  to  where  the 
Magna  Charta  was  signed;  we  were  on  our  way  to 
Runnimede.  But  there  was  no  indication  in  the  land- 
scape itself  that  we  were  approaching  the  place  where 
one  of  the  most  important  events  in  history  took 
place;  on  the  contrary,  it  was  a  landscape  wonder- 
fully charming  and  sweet,  as  if  this  had  always  been 
only  a  land  of  beauty  and  romance.  And  so,  as  we 
went  on  our  way  to  Runnimede,  the  sun  was  gleam- 
ing upon  the  water  and  there  were  boats  in  innumer- 
able profusion,  and  there  was  the  fluttering  of  gay 
streamers,  and  overlooking  the  river  there  were  bal- 
conied houses  painted  in  the  gayest  of  colors,  and 
houseboats  bright  with  flowers,  and  there  were  gay 
parties  out  on  the  water  or  gathered  in  groups  be- 
neath the  trees,  and  life  seemed  all  joyousness  and 
gayety  and  beauty  and  charm. 

We  came  to  Runnimede.  We  tried  to  visualize  the 
scene  as  it  was  so  many  centuries  ago,  on  that  June 
day  of  1215,  when  the  King  and  the  mighty  nobles, 
with  their  splendid  retinues,  and  the  thousands  of 
knights  and  men-at-arms,  with  all  their  banners 
bravely  spread  and  all  their  armor  flashing  high,  were 
here;  we  tried  to  picture  what  a  day  of  pomp  and 
glory  it  was ;  what  a  marvelous  hour  of  crowded  life 
when  these  lonely  meadows  were  literally  crowded 
with  all  that  is  great  and  distinguished  and  powerful 
in  England;  but  the  quiet  silver  river  and  the 
sweet  beauty  of  the  scene  made  visualization  difficult 
indeed. 

Runnimede  is  a  great  level  along  the  riverside,  a 
region  of  sweeping  meadows  that  stretch  in  their  rich 


186 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

greenery  off  to  low-rising  hills  and  to  woods  that  go 
gradually  thickening  into  the  distances.  Here  and 
there,  almost  hidden  among  the  trees  and  the  wild, 
free  shrubbery  is  a  pleasure-house  by  the  riverside, 
and  an  island  lies  out  in  the  stream.  Real  living  has 
not  yet  come  to  Runnimede  in  all  these  seven  hun- 
dred years ;  we  see  no  farmers,  no  cottagers,  but  only 
the  great  level  plain,  and  the  river  and  the  bordering 
trees,  and  hills  and  sweetness  and  restfulness  and 
charm. 

Few  visitors  go  to  Runnimede,  because  it  has  not 
been  a  readily  reachable  place  by  rail,  and,  even  more 
than  this,  it  offers  no  definite  sights  to  see  for  those 
(and  they  are  the  majority  of  travelers)  who  must 
be  shown  an  actual  city  or  palace  or  ruin,  or  at  least 
a  fragmentary  wall  or  a  gravestone.  Now,  cities 
and  palaces  and  ruins  and  walls  and  even  gravestones 
are  often  extremely  worth  seeing,  but  so  is  the  actual 
scene  of  any  great  event,  and  especially  when  the 
event  is  very  important  indeed  and  when  the  setting  is 
one  of  beauty  and  solitude  and  charm. 

And  we  marveled  anew,  as  over  and  over  we  mar- 
vel, at  realizing  how  much  a  motorist  can  see,  and 
see  easily  and  adequately,  in  a  single  day.  To-day 
is  to  be  a  very  short  run  indeed,  measured  in  miles, 
but  it  is  a  day  that  in  reality  carries  us  through  many, 
many  centuries  and  through  a  vast  variety  of  inter- 
est, for  although  we  started  late,  through  having  first 
to  get  from  London  back  to  where  the  car  was  wait- 
ing for  us,  we  have  since  seen  the  London  suburbs, 
and  Kingston  and  Hampton,  and  now  we  are  at  Run- 
nimede, and  we  are  to  reach  Windsor  to  spend  the 
night;  and  the  delight,  the  sense  of  achievement  and 
of  well-spent  time,  come  not  only  from  the  ease  and 
swiftness  of  motion,  but  because  of  the  utilization  of 
every  moment;  there  is  no  waste  of  time  waiting  for 
trains;  we  stay  at  a  place  precisely  as  long  as  we 


THE  VALLEY  OF  THE  THAMES  187 

wish  and  then,  at  that  very  moment,  we  are  off  into 
new  fields  of  discovery. 

We  suppose  that  everyone  ought  to  think  of  Wind- 
sor only  as  of  a  great  old  castle ;  and  indeed  the  castle 
is  extremely  impressive,  and  especially  so  when  seen 
from  the  river ;  but  here  at  Windsor  we  noticed  again 
that  a  traveler  must  needs  be  at  the  mercy  of  his 
own  impressions,  and  so,  without  either  forgetting 
or  belittling  architecture  and  history,  we  shall  set 
down  that  we  remember  the  many  beautiful  cats  of 
Windsor,  which  probably  attracted  our  attention  in 
particular  because  they  have  such  frequent  oppor- 
tunities to  look  at  a  king;  and  we  were  hugely  pleased 
with  the  sight  of  a  fine  little  fox-terrier  waiting  at 
the  lord  chamberlain's  door — a  very  attractive 
gentleman-in-waiting  indeed!  And  we  remember 
how  pleasantly  we  were  impressed  by  a  long,  quiet 
stairway  of  a  hundred  steps,  leading  down  from  the 
castle  to  a  quiet  outer  postern-door  opening  in  a 
quiet  corner  of  the  town,  for  it  gave  such  a  delightful 
impression  of  the  possibilities  of  old-time  romance; 
it  was  more  romantic,  so  far  as  that  alone  was  con- 
cerned, than  the  great  open  front  of  the  castle  could 
possibly  be.  And  it  interested  us  very  much,  not 
far  from  the  mysterious  postern-door,  to  come  upon 
a  tablet  marking  the  house  where  was  born  Robert 
Keayne,  the  founder  and  captain  of  the  Ancient  and 
Honorable  Artillery  Company  of  Boston,  the  oldest 
military  organization  in  the  United  States.  And  that 
he  was  born  in  1595  is  remindful  that,  in  spite  of  the 
general  impression  that  America  is  a  new  country, 
we  really  ought  to  consider  it  an  old  country,  for 
certainly  things  or  persons  that  date  back  in  England 
as  far  as  1595  are  considered  to  be  of  quite  an  age! 

It  surprised  us  to  find  that  Windsor  is  quite  a 
rough  place  in  the  evening,  for  roughish  men  and 
brawlers  then  congregate  at  the  corners  and  hilarious 


188 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

dance-music  and  dancing  and  drinking  are  quite  in 
evidence  as  to  sound.  We  should  not  much  notice 
such  things  in  an  ordinary  town,  but  here  one  ex- 
pects something  quite  different,  in  the  shadow  of  this 
immense  and  ancient  and  royal  castle,  still  kept  up, 
as  it  is,  as  a  present-day  home  of  royalty. 

Most  interesting  of  the  vast  and  varied  buildings 
within  the  castle  walls  is  ancient  St.  George's  Chapel, 
and  it  is  of  very  great  beauty  and  impressiveness ;  its 
splendid  interior,  with  its  fan-shaped  vaulting,  has 
been  unspoiled  by  time  or  restoration;  and  most  im- 
pressive of  all  are  the  stalls  of  the  Knights  of  the 
Order  of  the  Garter,  with  their  coats-of-arms  and 
banners.  We  felt  a  personal  interest  in  the  construc- 
tion work  in  St.  George's  Chapel  because  a  certain 
Geoffrey  Chaucer  was  appointed  by  Richard  the 
Second  to  look  after  this  work,  and  the  result  of  it 
all  seems  to  prove  that  a  poet  may  understand  the 
poetry  of  architecture. 

There  is  a  most  fascinating  quadrangle  of  ancient 
red-brick  half-timbered  houses,  also  within  the  in- 
closing walls  of  the  castle,  which  are  of  much  pic- 
torial interest,  and  fine  views  of  the  winding  river 
valley  may  be  had  from  the  commanding  walls  and 
battlements. 

On  the  whole,  much  though  one  admires  abstractly 
the  dignity  and  immensity  of  Windsor  Castle,  most 
of  it  is  markedly  lacking  in  atmosphere,  owing  largely 
to  the  tremendous  amount  of  thoroughgoing  restora- 
tion that  has  been  done  here,  which  gives  an  incon- 
gruous and  unseemly  look  of  modernity  to  it. 

But  there  is  splendid  and  unspoiled  impressive- 
ness in  the  view  of  the  towers  and  battlements  as  seen 
from  the  river;  indeed,  it  is  from  a  boat  on  the  water 
that  the  best  views  are  to  be  had.  After  dinner  we 
strolled  down  to  the  riverside,  and  took  a  rowboat, 
with  loose  oarlocks  and  two  sets  of  spoon-oars,  and 


THE  VALLEY  OF  THE  THAMES  189 

went  slowly  up  the  stream  in  an  adorable  evening 
light.  There  are  giant  elms,  and  one  riverside  gar- 
den after  another,  with  stone  balustrades,  as  if  from 
a  dream  or  an  opera,  and  with  little  water-gates; 
and  shady  willows  drooping  down  over  the  water, 
to  half  screen  the  boats  of  lovers,  of  whom  there  seem 
to  be  scores  out  upon  this  river — and  all  is  quiet  and 
happy;  it  is  all  of  an  unreal  beauty,  with  roses  and 
white  swans  and  the  soft-gleaming  water.  An  eight- 
oared  Eton  shell,  with  an  anxious,  little  agitated  cox- 
swain in  the  stern  and  a  bicycle-mounted  coach  glid- 
ing by  on  the  bank — there  is  a  path  on  one  side — seem 
somehow  to  be  part  of  the  stage-setting  of  the  scene ; 
and  just  as  unreal  seem  the  long  one-man  shells, 
slender  as  toothpicks,  that  skim  about  like  water- 
spiders  in  the  half  dusk.  Slender  girls,  poling  their 
boats,  stand  gracefully  like  gondoliers;  and  these, 
with  the  lovers,  and  the  many,  many  white  swans,  all 
seem  set  out  upon  this  watery  stage  for  our  delecta- 
tion. Never  was  a  river  so  satisfactorily  used  as  is 
the  Thames;  but  we  realize  that  thus  to  use  a  river 
requires  temperament  and  long  twilights. 

Next  morning  it  was  cold;  one  marvels  how  very 
cold  it  can  be  in  England  in  rose-bowered  June — 
but  it  quickly  grew  warmer  under  a  hot  sun.  We 
went  up  to  the  castle  and  watched  the  Coldstream 
Guards  come  out  and  drill  under  the  King's  win- 
dows, but,  though  the  drill  began  with  snap,  it  daw- 
dled off  into  dullness,  and  more  than  anything  else 
developed  into  a  matter  of  highly-tailored  officers 
walking  two  by  two  while  the  men  waited  for  the  next 
orders.  "  Seems  to  be  a  long  operation,"  was  the 
watch-snapping  remark  of  a  Colonial  beside  us;  but 
the  scarlet  coats,  the  blue  trousers,  red  at  the  seams, 
the  great  brass  chains  under  the  chins,  the  monstrous 
brown-black  shakos,  were  very  pictorial  on  the  great 
green  and  against  the  cold  gray  of  the  castle.    The 


190 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

King  did  not, look  out  at  the  drill — ^he  had  seen  such 
drills  before. 

This  happened  to  be  the  day  when  the  King  and 
Queen  were  to  drive  in  Ascot  state  to  the  races,  and 
we  went  around  to  the  long  Virginia  Walk,  which 
is  an  interminable  distance  of  drive,  bordered  by  trees 
and  grass,  where  a  scattering  of  people  had  gathered 
to  see  royalty. 

There  was  a  mild  flutter  as  the  royal  carriage  was 
seen  advancing  from  the  castle;  and  we  saw  that 
"  Ascot  state "  was  something  very  simple  indeed. 
The  Queen  was  in  white,  with  her  usual  make  of  white 
hat,  and  the  King  looked  very  proper.  There  were 
four  horses  to  the  royal  carriage,  and  two  footmen 
up  behind  as  well  as  postilions  riding  in  front,  and 
several  high-hatted  horsemen  rode  along  followingly. 
Both  the  King  and  the  Queen  had  the  look  such  as 
actors  have,  as  of  hoping  and  looking  for  applause; 
and  their  faces  gleamed  with  genuine  delight  when 
there  was  a  faint  cheering.  There  was  a  general  look 
about  it  all,  which  irresistibly  reminded  us  of  the  jibe 
about  George  the  Fifth  and  Mary  the  other  four- 
fifths. 


CHAPTER  XIX 

REMOTE   FROM   TOWNS 

WE  motored  out  of  Windsor  with  a  final  re- 
minder of  romance  as  we  passed  the  postern- 
gate,  and  a  final  touch  of  beauty  as  we 
crossed  the  bridge  and  took  an  au  revoir  glimpse  of 
the  Thames  going  on  its  silver  winding  way,  and  we 
went  right  through  long-hatted  and  short- jacketed 
Eton,  a  clean  and  pleasant  old  place,  and  passed 
by  the  famous  school,  not  particularly  impressive, 
and  were  quickly  out  in  the  open  country.  It  was 
a  region  of  charming  country  lanes  and  lonely,  bushy 
greenery,  and  we  followed  a  few  curves  and  turns 
through  this  region  of  shaded  beauty,  and  passed  a 
twin-lodged  entrance  with  little  classic  pillars  mak- 
ing a  perfect  and  highly  agreeable  little  impression, 
and  stopped  near  a  solitary  mossy-bricked  cottage 
with  Tudor-like  chimneys,  and  followed  a  footpath — 
for  there  is  no  motor  or  carriage  approach  whatever 
— through  a  lych-gate  of  oak,  into  the  quietest,  gen- 
tlest old  sleeping  God's  Acre,  lying  beside  a  mossy 
old  church  of  irregular  form ;  and  we  are  at  the  church 
of  the  Elegy,  the  little  country  churchyard  which 
Gray  made  immortal. 

Church  and  churchyard  alike  are  fittingly  in  the 
midst  of  a  great  loneliness.  All  is  so  absolutely  silent 
that  you  scarcely  hear  the  twitter  of  a  bird  or  the 
soft  rustle  of  the  wind  in  the  trees  that  grow  thickly 
round  about.  There  are  enormous,  ancient,  dark  and 
gloomy  yews :  indeed,  as  one  looks  about,  he  sees  with 
what  perfection  of  itemized  detail  the  poet  described 

191 


192 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

the  spot,  for  the  yew-tree's  shade,  the  turf  heaving  in 
many  a  moldering  heap,  the  elms,  the  ivied  tower — 
all  is  here,  and  all  is  as  impressive  as  his  words;  and 
all  the  air  a  solemn  stillness  holds. 

Most  of  the  graves  are  little  unmarked  mounds; 
"  for  the  people  are  mostly  too  poor  for  stones,"  says 
a  countryman  who  has  unobtrusively  appeared  out  of 
nowhere.  And  these  stoneless  graves  where  the  rude 
forefathers  of  the  hamlet  sleep  have  been  crowded 
thick  and  close  by  the  centuries. 

Gray  himself  lies  with  his  forefathers,  close  to  the 
walls  of  the  old  church,  in  a  brick,  stone-covered  tomb 
of  table  shape,  amid  the  peace  and  beauty  that  in  his 
lifetime  so  appealed  to  him;  with  the  world  forgot- 
ten by  him,  but  never  by  the  world  to  be  forgot. 

It  is  a  simple  church,  without  the  long-drawn  aisles 
and  fretted  vaults  of  greater  structures ;  the  walls  are 
of  brick  and  rubble-stone,  covered  with  plaster  which 
is  picturesquely  flaking  away,  and  the  church  has  an 
ancient  tile  roof.  That  it  also  has  -a  little  spire,  mis- 
takenly added  to  its  ivy-mantled  tower  and  deplored 
by  every  lover  of  the  Elegy  and  of  good  looks,  is 
something  that  could  be  remedied  in  half  a  day — by 
taking  it  off!  Why,  in  this  lovely  place,  has  it  not 
been  done? — for  there  is  none  so  poor  in  taste  to  do 
it  reverence. 

Close  beside  the  graveyard  is  a  field  that  is  an  un- 
broken glow  of  scarlet  poppies,  and  adjoining  that 
field  is  one  which  is  all  a  shimmer  of  white  with 
daisies ;  and  at  some  little  distance  is  a  huge  cenotaph, 
put  up  by  admirers  of  Gray  who  wished  to  build  this 
ostentatious  memorial  but  fortunately  were  not  per- 
mitted to  do  so  near  the  church. 

This  country  churchyard  seems,  in  its  retired  lone- 
liness, to  be  so  very  far  away  from  everything  that 
it  seems  incredible,  when  actually  at  the  spot,  to 
realize  that  it  is  so  close  to  Windsor  and  only  a  few 


REMOTE  FROM  TOWNS 193 

miles  from  London.  And  this  striking  effect  of  iso- 
lation is  the  most  interesting  and  vital  of  the  features 
of  Stoke  Poges.  From  the  churchyard,  even  the  cot- 
tage which  we  passed  on  approaching  is  not  to  be 
seen,  nor  is  any  other  habitation  of  any  kind  what- 
ever. 

Gray  died  in  1771;  his  poem  has  already  lived 
longer  than  the  United  States  of  America;  and  one 
cannot  but  wonder  what  governments  will  rise  and 
fall  while  men  still  murmur  his  lines. 

Leaving  Stoke  Poges,  we  had  another  rural  run 
through  narrow  leafy  lanes;  through  a  sweet,  old- 
fashioned  England;  and  at  a  little  cottage  in  the 
woods  we  stopped,  for  there  was  a  little  sign  of  tea, 
and  a  decent,  elderly  cottage-woman  curtsied  a 
welcome  and  made  us  tea  and  brought  it  out  with 
bread  and  butter.  It  was  a  little  red-brick  cottage 
by  the  roadside,  damp  and  low-set,  but  extremely 
pretty,  and  there  was  a  little  white  donkey  in  front, 
upon  which  the  woman's  husband  was  just  fastening 
a  high  saddle,  but  before  he  rode  away  he  gravely 
showed  us,  as  we  admired  his  cute  little  donkey,  a 
dark  cross-mark  upon  its  back  and  said,  with  simple 
and  earnest  faith,  that,  "  as  Scripture  teaches,"  all 
white  donkeys  have  borne  such  a  cross  on  their  backs 
since  Christ  chose  a  white  donkey  upon  which  to  ride 
into  Jerusalem. 

We  are  to-day  going  along  pleasant,  shaded  high- 
ways as  we  aim  here  and  there  for  interesting  locali- 
ties that  are  scarcely  reachable  except  by  motor  car; 
and  the  car  does  make  so  simple  what  were  the  ardu- 
ous expeditions  of  other  days ;  and  we  come  to  Burn- 
ham  Beeches.  We  knew  them  to  be  the  finest  beeches 
in  England,  and  expected  to  see  perhaps  a  dozen 
or  so,  in  a  park,  and  we  were  therefore  not  at  all 
prepared  to  find  that  they  cover  a  great  area  and  are 
an  ancient  beech  forest.    There  are  hundreds  of  trees 


194 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

that  are  positively  immense  in  size ;  ancient,misshapen, 
crooked,  gnarled,  with  now  and  then  a  hollow,  ancient 
shell  that  is  still  alive;  and  many  a  small  beech-tree 
is  growing  up  among  and  between  the  old  ones,  so 
that,  centuries  hence,  there  will  still  be  a  great  forest 
of  Burnham  Beeches  when  the  present  huge  and  fan- 
tastic monarchs  have  fallen. 

There  are  miles  of  beautiful  roadway  leading 
through  the  shady,  shimmering  glory  of  magic  green, 
and  all  the  earth  beneath  the  trees  is  covered  with 
emerald  moss.  All  about  us  in  the  distances  is  a 
dusky  green  darkling  as  if  for  Druids  and  dryads — 
both  of  which,  usually  so  impossible  of  conception, 
all  at  once  seem  alike  in  being  the  natural  denizens 
of  such  a  wood. 

It  is  noteworthy,  and  something  fine  and  broad, 
that  the  corporation  of  London  has  acquired  these 
marvelous  woods  to  safeguard  them  for  the  future, 
and  maintain  them  "  for  the  benefit  of  the  people," 
as  it  is  finely  worded  on  a  notice  that  we  see  at  one 
of  the  forest  crossroads. 

From  the  beech  forest  we  followed  indirectly  me- 
andering roads,  and  went  down  a  hillside  between 
masses  of  rhododendron,  in  full  bloom,  of  so  unusual 
a  size  that  they  towered  for  a  long  distance  twenty  or 
thirty  feet  in  height  above  us. 

We  swept  through  broad  sweet  glades,  we  rode 
between  immense  carpets  of  acres  and  acres  of  rich 
ferns,  with  now  and  then  a  cottage  or  mansion  peep- 
ing among  the  trees,  but  seldom  even  so  much  as  this 
of  a  sign  of  human  life. 

We  came  to  Beaconsfield,  reminiscent  of  Disraeli's 
title,  a  little  place  of  little  houses  that  seem  smaller 
than  they  really  are  through  the  width  of  the  street 
and  of  the  immense  open  space  in  the  middle  of  the 
village,  and  we  sped  on  into  more  sweeping  glades, 
and  passed  fields  yellow  and  scarlet  and  white  with 


REMOTE  FROM  TOWNS 195 

flowers,  and  went  beside  long  hedges  thick  with  wild 
roses  or  glowing  with  white  elder  flowers.  We  went 
through  a  tangle  of  the  narrowest  imaginable  lanes, 
so  narrow  as  scarcely  to  give  sufficient  width  for  even 
a  walker  to  pass  us,  and  at  length  we  came  to  a  lonely 
little  meeting-house  at  a  lonely  corner  of  a  lonely 
road.     And  the  place  was  Jordans. 

But  the  building  does  not  look  in  the  least  like  a 
meeting-house;  it  looks  like  an  ancient,  lonely  farm- 
house with  its  family  graveyard.  This  appearance  is 
increased  by  the  little  wooden  fence  in  front  of  the 
building,  by  the  muslin  at  one  of  the  windows,  by 
flowers  along  the  wall  and  by  smoke  coming  out  of 
the  chimney.  And  the  building  was  really  in  the  very 
long  ago  a  farmhouse,  and  its  interior  was  opened  up 
into  a  space  for  meetings,  and  there  are  plain  wooden 
benches  for  the  worshipers  and  there  is  a  tiny  gal- 
lery, arranged  with  slides,  and  the  sexton  has  quaint 
rooms  in  one  end  of  the  building. 

This  old  Friends'  meeting-house,  the  most  famous 
meeting-house  of  the  sect,  is  a  low-built,  square-front 
building  of  dulled  red  brick,  and  its  broad  hip  roof 
is  covered  with  dull  red  tile,  and  the  simple,  little 
gravestones  just  over  the  fronting  fence  are  mainly 
those  of  one  of  the  most  distinguished  men  in  Ameri- 
can history  and  members  of  his  family;  for  William 
Penn  is  here,  and  his  two  wives  are  here,  and  quite 
a  number  of  his  sons  and  daughters,  including  his 
daughter  Letitia,  who  is  still  remembered  in  Phila- 
delphia by  the  name  Letitia  Street. 

There  are  great  trees  close  beside  the  meeting- 
house and  the  graves;  it  is  peculiarly  a  place  of  re- 
pose, of  restfulness,  of  that  peace  that  the  Quakers 
so  love;  and  a  charming  touch  is  added  to  it  all  by 
the  flowers  that  grow  closely  about ;  the  honeysuckle, 
the  white  roses,  the  fragrant  stock. 

Jordans  is  peculiarly  a  bygone  place  that  has  re- 


196 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

tained  to  the  full  its  spirit  and  its  atmosphere. 
Buried  here  in  this  green  region  of  loneliness,  the 
simple  grave  of  William  Penn,  the  courtier,  the  man 
of  place  and  power,  the  wise  and  liberal  and  far- 
seeing  founder  of  the  great  commonwealth  that  per- 
petuates his  name,  is  impressive  in  its  austerity. 

There  was  another  interesting  place  to  be  searched 
for  hereabouts,  and  that  was  the  cottage  in  which 
Milton  finished  "  Paradise  Lost  "  and  began  "  Para- 
dise Regained."  And  the  going  about  in  this  out- 
of-the-way  region,  quite  away  from  the  main-traveled 
roads,  through  these  rural  lanes,  unchanged  in  ap- 
pearance for  many  generations,  choosing  our  own 
turnings,  and  finding  delight  in  every  road,  and  com- 
ing happily  to  the  places  that  we  sought,  was  a  series 
of  experiences  full  of  a  pleasure  that  would  have  been 
vastly  lessened  had  we  merely  been  driven  prosaically 
by  someone  who  knew  the  roads.  And,  we  may  add, 
short  stretches  of  road  through  some  of  this  little- 
traveled  region  have  been  quite  below  the  usual  Eng- 
lish standard;  yet  this  is  not  set  down  as  criticism, 
but  only  as  a  reminder  that  the  road  surfaces  are 
nearly  everywhere  of  such  a  superlative  quality,  even 
through  lonely  Devon  and  North  Wales,  that  even 
a  brief  lapse  toward  what  we  are  accustomed  to  at 
home  is  noticeable. 

Milton  left  London  on  account  of  the  Great 
Plague,  and  this  house  was  described  to  him  as  "  a 
pretty  box  "  by  the  friend  who  found  it  for  him — a 
curious  point  of  attraction  to  describe  to  a  man  who 
had  been  blind  for  a  dozen  years.  So  Milton  himself 
never  saw  this  little  brick  cottage,  with  the  diamond 
panes  in  its  little  windows;  he  never  saw  the  long, 
straggling  village  twisting  down  its  long,  easy  slope 
to  his  cottage  door.  The  garden  beside  the  cottage 
is  now  filled  with  the  greatest  imaginable  enormous 
Oriental  poppies,  but  this  is  a  kind  of  flower  that  has 


The  sceke  of  Gray's  Elegy 


Ix    THE    HEART   OF    THE    BuRXHA3I    BeECHES 


William  Pexn's  grave  at  Jordans 


MiLTOX's    COTTAGE    AT    ChALFONT    St.    GiLES 


REMOTE  FROM  TOWNS 197 

come  in  since  Milton's  time.  To  this  very  cottage 
doubtless  was  sent  the  five  pounds  which  was  the  con- 
tract price  for  which  "  Paradise  Lost  "  was  written. 

The  village  has  lost  the  rustic  quality  which  it 
doubtless  once  possessed;  but  the  little,  pretty  cot- 
tage, with  an  outside  chimney  oddly  built  against 
the  front,  and  a  queer  httle  lean-to  against  the 
farther  front  corner,  and  a  roof  of  wavering  tile,  is 
as  pretty  as  one  could  anticipate  from  the  romantic- 
seeming  name  of  the  place,  Chalfont  St.  Giles. 

From  here  we  ran  to  Great  Missenden  and  thence 
by  a  minor  but  excellent  cross-country  road  through 
a  rich  farming  country  and,  with  one  of  those  fre- 
quent delightful  contrasts  of  the  English  landscape, 
passed  unexpectedly  into  a  woodland  with  dark  and 
profound  shade  and  then  suddenly  out  upon  a  sunny 
widespread  and  sweeping  view;  and  before  us  was 
the  market-town  of  Prince's  Risborough,  the  town  of 
the  Black  Prince. 

We  motored  entirely  about  the  place,  looking  for 
its  charm,  for  we  had  made  quite  a  detour  to  come 
here  because  Frank  R.  Stockton  used  to  consider  this 
the  most  delightful  place,  in  appearance,  in  England. 
But,  though  it  has  a  great  deal  of  quaintness,  and  an 
agreeable  mellow  old-time  air,  we  see  quite  clearly 
that  if  motors  had  been  used  in  Stockton's  time  he 
would  have  found,  as  we  have  done,  many  towns  more 
picturesque.  Still,  it  seemed  almost  worth  while  to 
come  to  this  village  of  small,  dull  quaintness  for  the 
sake  of  seeing  the  sign  of  a  "  Baker  and  Fly 
Proprietor." 

A  really  fascinating  feature  of  this  vicinity  is  a 
great  white  cross,  cut  in  the  brilliant  grass  of  a  white- 
chalk  hill  overlooking  Prince's  Risborough,  for  it  not 
only  keeps  in  mind  a  great  battle  between  the  Danes 
and  the  Saxons,  somewhere  vaguely  in  the  dark  back- 
ward of  time,  but  it  delighted  us  to  think  that  men 


198 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

could  go  out  with  shovels  and  make  a  strikinsf  and 
permanent  monument  by  so  simple  a  means  as  cut- 
ting off  the  turf. 

Just  a  few  miles  farther  along  these  untraveled 
ways,  and  we  come  to  the  forgotten  town  of  Thame, 
a  rather  tired-out  old  village  with  some  interesting 
bits  of  the  sixteenth  century;  and  one  likes  to  re- 
member that  this  is  the  village  to  which  Hampden 
rode  wounded  from  the  skirmish  field  of  Chalgrove, 
to  die,  and  there  is  an  ancient  square-towered  church, 
looking  as  if  out  of  a  story-book,  with  a  tilleul  path, 
heavy  shaded,  about  it,  that  must  have  looked  just  as 
it  does  now  when  this  village  and  the  nation  were  in 
a  fever  of  excitement  over  Hampden's  death. 

From  Thame  it  is  a  dozen  miles  or  so  to  Oxford, 
and  the  old  university  city  is  approached  through  a 
series  of  rather  unattractive  modern  suburbs  that 
give  no  promise  of  the  fascinating  beauty  of  the 
ancient  place. 


CHAPTER  XX 

THE   HEART   OF  ENGLAND 

OXFORD  is  a  city  of  silvery-gray.  It  is  a  city 
of  buildings  fascinating  in  their  beauty  and 
with  their  outlines  softly  blurred  with  man- 
tling ivy;  a  city  that  gives  definite  and  unforget- 
table recollections  of  things  of  serene  beauty  that  will 
remain  in  the  memory  as  joys  forever;  a  city  that 
gives  sweetly  vague  impressions  of  a  broad  agglom- 
eration of  age  and  charm. 

We  entered  the  city  by  the  High  Street;  a  street 
of  distinction,  a  street  from  which  one  gets  enchant- 
ing glimpses  of  suggested  beauty,  a  famous  street,  a 
venerable  street,  a  broad  street,  a  street  with  the 
eye-satisfying,  dominating  tower  of  Magdalen  at 
one  end  and  a  succession  of  towers  and  gables  and 
glorious  f a9ades  as  we  go  on  to  the  center  of  the 
city. 

We  sought  to  renew  a  delightful  impression  of 
years  ago  by  living  in  English  lodgings,  for  Oxford 
is  full  of  them,  and  we  made  our  way  to  a  secluded 
square  and  knocked  at  the  door  of  the  house  where 
we  had  lived  before.  Every  house  in  the  square,  and 
indeed  every  house  we  passed  in  getting  there,  seemed 
given  over  to  quiet  young  men  seated  on  cushions 
on  the  window-sills,  with  knees  drawn  up  and  deco- 
rously reading  in  the  soft  evening  light,  or  if  per- 
chance there  was  one  sill  without  its  student,  his  cush- 
ion was  there!  By  good  chance  we  found  we  could 
stay  at  the  old  place  again  and  we  tasted  once  more 
the  pleasures  of  immaculate  perfection  of  service  in 

199 


200 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

this  Oxford  lodging  and  we  thought  how  shabby 
would  be  the  same  place  in  America  after  years  of 
student  boarding. 

We  lingered  in  Oxford,  for  we  loved  the  place,  and 
we  went  about  renewing  former  experiences  and  find- 
ing new  ones. 

Perhaps  the  most  representative  of  all  the  Oxford 
buildings  are  those  of  the  college  of  Christ  Church, 
with  its  historical  foundation  by  Cardinal  Wolsey, 
with  its  prodigious  bell,  Old  Tom,  which  booms  sono- 
rously its  one  hundred  and  one  strokes  every  even- 
ing at  five  minutes  after  nine,  with  its  imposing  quad- 
rangle, with  its  superb  fan-vaulted  entrance  and 
staircase,  with  its  fascinating  old  kitchen,  still  used, 
and  redolent  of  roast-beef,  and  with  its  ancient  oak- 
ceilinged  hall,  where  the  students  still  dine,  with 
distinguished  Christ  Church  collegians  of  the  past 
looking  down  imperturbably  from  paintings  along 
the  wall. 

And  this  points  out  what  makes,  after  all,  the  prin- 
cipal interest  of  Oxford;  that,  with  its  beauty, 
serenity  and  age,  it  is  a  city  of  colleges  whose  rooms 
and  halls  continue  to  be  in  daily  use  just  as  they  have 
been  in  use  for  centuries. 

Most  beautiful  of  all  in  Oxford  is  Magdalen;  and 
its  surroundings  and  quadrangle  remain  a  fine  mem- 
ory, and  we  found  ourselves  returning  once  and 
again  for  the  sheer  pleasure  of  walking  through  its 
cloistered  passages  and  across  its  fine  greenery  and  in 
looking  again  at  the  wonderful  beauty  of  its  build- 
ings and  its  tower. 

There  are  two  green  walks  in  Oxford  that  are  su- 
premely lovely.  And  one  of  these  is  the  quiet  walk 
beside  the  Cherwell,  and  there  we  saw  across  the  little 
stream  a  few  deer  gently  browsing,  with  the  tiniest 
of  slender-legged,  dappled  little  fawns  beside  them. 
And  the  other  is  the  walk  through  Christ  Church 


Magdalex  axd  its  greek  quadrangle 


The  High  Street  of  Oxford 


In  the  park  of  Blenheim 


In  a  quiet  Broadway 


THE  HEART  OF  ENGLAND 201 

meadows,  a  great  level  green  along  which  there  is  an 
avenue  of  ancient  and  tremendous  elms. 

With  all  the  sweet  and  shaded  seclusion  of  Ox- 
ford, and  the  restfulness  that  has  come  with  the  ages, 
it  should  be  remembered  that  close  against  this  sweep- 
ing green  with  its  avenued  elms,  but  walled  away 
from  it  so  as  to  be  seen  only  by  going  down  an  out- 
side street,  is  a  slum  apparently  so  bad  and  miserable 
that  it  would  be  condemned  instantly  in  any  city  with 
proper  governmental  ideas. 

Looking  at  this  queen  among  college  cities,  one 
thinks  of  the  lines  so  long  ago  applied  to  another 
beautiful  queen;  that  age  cannot  wither  her  nor  cus- 
tom stale  her  infinite  variety.  And  perhaps  we 
thought  of  these  lines  on  a  queen  because  of  seeing, 
as  we  drew  up  in  front  of  Magdalen  tower,  the  Prince 
of  Wales  just  going  away  in  his  touring-car;  he  being 
a  student  of  Magdalen.  "  In  fact,"  as  one  of  the 
proctors  said  as  he  walked  along  with  us  under  the 
beautiful  tower,  "  everybody  is  educated  at  Oxford — 
or,  at  least  either  here  or  at  Cambridge,"  he  added; 
and  this  led  us  to  make  a  mental  inventory,  and  it 
seemed  to  show  the  astonishing  fact  that  practically 
none  of  the  great  names  which  more  than  any  others 
make  up  the  list  of  great  Englishmen  in  the  minds 
of  Americans  were  educated  at  either  of  the  great 
universities.  Shakespeare,  Dickens,  Wellington,  the 
Marlborough  who  was  first  of  the  name,  Scott,  Burns, 
Joshua  Reynolds,  Wedgwood — the  list  could  go 
lengthily  on;  and  point  is  added  to  it  by  the  fact 
that  Thackeray  began  at  Oxford,  but  left,  and  Shel- 
ley began  at  Cambridge  and  was  expelled.  But  no 
such  reflections  could  spoil  the  splendid  outward  im- 
pressiveness  of  these  old  Gothic  buildings,  nor  take 
away  from  the  splendid  scholastic  air  of  the  place. 

A  striking  feature  of  the  Oxford  of  to-day,  in 
marked  contrast  to  what  it  was  only  a  few  years 


202 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

ago,  is  the  number  who  are  there  who  are  not  Eng- 
lishmen ;  for  students  are  there  from  many  countries, 
including  numerous  East  Indians,  and  markedly  the 
numerous  Rhodes  scholars  from  the  English  Colo- 
nies and  from  the  United  States ;  and  it  was  interest- 
ing to  meet  several  of  the  Rhodes  scholars,  in  blazers 
of  brilliant  hue  that  bore  the  arms  of  their  particular 
college,  the  most  fetching  being  the  insignia  of  Pem- 
broke; and  we  saw  others  dashing  about  the  streets 
of  the  city  in  hip-length  gowns  of  black  mohair 
thrown  on,  not  worn,  over  their  other  clothes,  just 
like  the  English. 

But  Oxford  is  far  from  being  an  ill-tailored  city, 
and  we  came  to  know  as  a  common  sight  what  we 
called  the  trouser-wagons,  which  were  wagons  that 
were  solidly  loaded  at  the  college  doors  with  col- 
legiate trousers  to  be  taken  away  to  be  pressed;  and 
as  we  wandered  at  will,  for  many  of  the  passages  are 
freely  opened  to  the  public,  through  some  of  the 
colleges  in  the  early  morning — which  merely  means 
between  nine  and  ten  o'clock,  which  seemed  to  be  a 
very  early  hour  indeed  for  Oxford  students — it 
amused  us  to  see  rows  of  morning-polished  shoes 
waiting  at  their  doorways,  and  we  passed  a  room, 
that  was  really  a  sort  of  cell,  where  the  shoe-blacker 
of  that  college  was  still  busily  at  work  at  his  morning- 
task,  surrounded  by  a  shoal  of  shoes. 

For  our  final  survey  of  Oxford,  for  a  final  and 
farewell  impression,  we  took  a  comprehensive  run 
throughout  the  entire  city:  a  review  of  its  fetching 
glimpses,  its  broad  views,  its  waterside  and  its  boat- 
ing, its  towers  and  college  fronts  and  churches,  the 
general  aspect  of  Brasenose,  Christ  Church,  Magda- 
len, Pembroke  and  Corpus  Christi,  and  as  we  started 
off  on  our  onward  journey  we  were  by  the  vision 
splendid  on  our  way  attended. 

We  first  made  a  short  run  to  Blenheim,  and  our 


THE  HEART  OF  ENGLAND 203 

most  vivid  impression  of  that  place  is  of  poor  old 
women  creeping  miserably  along  the  park  roads,  not 
even  raising  their  eyes  from  the  ground,  and  of  one 
huddling  in  her  arms  a  meager  bundle  of  fagots. 

The  palace  of  Blenheim  is  enormous  and  ostenta- 
tious, but  it  is  not  quite  beautiful,  not  quite  stately, 
and  in  color  it  is  an  unfortunate  dark  gray.  It  stands 
in  the  midst  of  a  huge  park,  containing  enormous 
elms  and  great  stretches  of  rough  grass,  and  grass 
is  growing  in  the  very  avenue  in  front  of  the  main 
entrance  of  the  palace;  in  fact,  there  is  a  general  air 
of  neglect  about  the  entire  place.  The  palace  is  not 
open  to  visitors  as  it  used  to  be,  nor  are  motors  al- 
lowed within  the  park  gates,  and  as  it  was  a  hot  day 
this  meant  what  turned  out  to  be  a  blistering  walk, 
bare  of  shade,  of  a  mile  or  so  before  we  reached  the 
palace  front.  But  there  is  a  great  deal  of  beauti- 
ful water  in  the  park,  with  pictorial  swans  and  an 
old  stone  bridge,  and  the  memories  of  Sweet  Rosa- 
mond and  Woodstock  and  Walter  Scott  add  their 
charm;  and  beside  the  palace  is  a  sunken  garden 
which  is  the  very  perfection  of  clipped  garden,  with 
its  chpped  peacocks  of  golden  yew  and  its  clipped 
and  pillarlike  yew  bushes  and  in  all  a  rich  effective- 
ness of  golden  yew  and  deep-green  box,  with  massed 
roses  and  hydrangeas  in  brilliant  pinks. 

The  village  of  Woodstock,  at  the  palace  gates,  a 
long,  stone,  ancient  village,  wears  a  general  air  of 
depression.  It  is  indeed  a  village  of  brooding  silence, 
for  the  shutting  of  the  palace  to  visitors  and  its  prac- 
tical disuse  of  late  years  has  stopped  the  stream  of 
travel,  and  all  this  seems  largely  to  have  done  away, 
for  the  time,  with  the  prosperity  of  the  place. 

At  Woodstock  we  were  faced  with  the  question — 
and  similar  choices  frequently  faced  us,  for  England 
is  so  impossibly  rich  in  places  of  interest — of  going 
either  to  Sulgrave  to  the  northward  or  Broadway 


204 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIlSr 

much  farther  to  the  west.  It  did  not  seem  possible, 
viewing  the  entire  route,  to  take  in  both,  and  so  we 
decided  for  Broadway,  which  we  had  for  years  wished 
to  see,  instead  of  for  the  place  associated  with  the 
forbears  of  Washington.  We  should  much  have 
liked  to  see  Sulgrave  Manor,  but  we  remembered 
that,  after  all,  Washington  himself  had  neither  known 
nor  cared  about  the  place  and  had  answered,  when 
written  to  by  Garter  King-at-Arms  in  regard  to  his 
ancestry,  that  the  first  of  his  family  in  Virginia  had 
possibly  come  from  Yorkshire  or  Lancashire,  or  even 
farther  north ;  and  this  partly  reconciled  us  to  not  see- 
ing Sulgrave. 

And  so  we  chose  Broadway.  "  Broadway "  al- 
ways has  a  good  sound  to  an  American!  It  was 
something  like  twenty  miles  away,  and  we  began  with 
a  superb  run,  over  superb  roads,  through  the  richest 
farming  country  that  we  have  yet  seen;  a  rolling 
country  so  gently  rolling  as  to  be  almost  level;  but, 
in  spite  of  its  being  so  rich  a  farmland,  nettles  were 
growing  as  elsewhere  along  the  roadsides  and  in  the 
corners. 

We  passed  through  a  village  with  the  fascinating 
name  of  Chipping  Norton,  but  with  nothing  note- 
worthy to  remember  it  by,  but,  chancing  to  see  that 
the  inns  of  the  place  were  not  only  a  White  Hart 
but  an  impossible  Blue  Boar,  we  hopefully  looked  for 
the  Purple  Cow! 

Now  we  go  into  slightly  hilly  country  and  find  it 
is  a  fox-hunting  region,  and  we  pass  a  large  pack  of 
hounds  by  the  roadside  and  find  that  they  are  the 
hounds  of  the  Warwickshire  Hunt. 

A  few  miles  beyond  Chipping  Norton  we  stalled 

near  the  foot  of  a  hill — and  found  that  it  was  because 

-of  an  inexcusable  forgetting  of  gasoline! — something 

bound  to  happen  once.    And  with  the  knowledge  that 

we  were  really  stalled  there  came  a  vivid  realiza- 


THE  HEART  OF  ENGLAND 205 

tion  of  what  we  had  been  frequently  noticing,  but 
which  until  now  had  had  nothing  of  personal  appli- 
cation :  the  fact  that  one  may  be  very  lonely  and  very 
far,  apparently,  from  human  habitation  on  an  Eng- 
lish country  road. 

There  was  enough  gasoline  to  run  the  car  if  there 
were  a  level  road  to  keep  the  supply  level  in  the  tank, 
but  in  this  lonely  valley,  with  a  hill  in  front  and  one 
behind,  we  were  helpless. 

A  half  mile  up  the  hill  a  couple  with  motorcycle 
and  side  basket  had  come  to  a  halt  and  we  wondered  if 
they,  too,  were  halted  for  the  same  reason  as  we ;  but 
at  least  they  would  probably  know  how  near  and  in 
which  direction  was  the  nearest  source  of  supply. 
The  two  were  a  thoroughly  delightful  young  Eng- 
lishman and  his  remarkably  pretty  wife,  and  it 
appeared  that  they  had  merely  stopped  for  the  tight- 
ening of  a  loosened  chain,  and  instantly  the  young 
man  volunteered  to  run  back  the  few  miles  to  Chip- 
ping Norton  and  get  gasoline  for  us — it  is  sold  all 
over  England  in  sealed  two-gallon  tin  cans — and  he 
offered  this  so  instantly  and  cordially  that  we  ac- 
cepted his  ready  courtesy,  and  he  left  his  wife  with 
us  while  he  was  away,  and  he  came  back,  in  a  won- 
derfully short  time,  waving  his  hand  in  triumph  as 
he  approached.  Never  was  help  more  opportune; 
here  was  literally  a  god  from  the  machine!  Tea  was 
all  ready  by  the  roadside,  for  we  had  with  us  our  tiny 
spirit-lamp  and  some  American  dainties  which  we 
had  kept  in  stock  for  an  emergency  from  a  steamer 
basket.  We  had  a  gay  little  tea-party  together — 
and  not  until  we  were  through  did  we  realize  that, 
as  true  English,  they  had  never  before  tasted  clear 
tea  without  cream.  Not  until  we  were  parting  from 
our  new  friends  did  it  develop,  with  some  little  shy- 
ness, that  they  were  on  their  wedding  journey  by 
motorcycle  and  sidecar.    From  where  we  were,  they 


200 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN^ 

were  now  going  on  their  way  to  Tewkesbury,  and  this 
reminded  us  of  the  time,  which  seemed  so  distant, 
although  it  was  only  about  two  weeks  ago,  when  we 
had  ourselves  been  at  Tewkesbury  and,  knowing  that 
we  were  to  be  very  near  it  on  our  northward  run,  had 
wondered  what  would  happen  in  between;  and  of 
the  many  pleasant  things  that  actually  happened  in 
the  intervening  time,  this  meeting  with  the  delightful 
newly-weds  was  among  the  pleasantest. 

Our  road  led  us  on  our  way  through  towns  so 
delightfully  named  as  JVIoreton-in-the-Marsh  and 
Barton-on-the-Heath — ^both  of  these  old  names  being 
descriptive,  for  Barton-on-the-Heath  is  literally  set 
on  a  heath  and  Moreton-in-the-Marsh  is  a  very  low- 
set  town  standing  on  a  dead  level  surrounded  by  what 
was  a  great  marsh ;  and  Moreton  has  a  rather  curious 
arcaded  market-place,  which  however  did  not  de- 
tain us. 

In  a  wooded,  secluded  spot,  as  we  went  on,  we  saw 
a  towering  Georgian  pillar,  and  it  was  so  unexpected 
in  such  a  place  and  so  suggestive  of  mystery  that  we 
backed  the  car  to  investigate,  and  found  it  was  a 
four-shirestone,  for  it  marked  the  meeting-point 
of  Warwickshire,  Gloucestershire,  Oxfordshire  and 
Worcestershire.  And,  like  the  many  states  shown 
you  from  the  top  of  Lookout  Mountain,  you  really 
could  not  tell  one  from  another,  they  all  looked  so 
alike; — and  a  bro^vn  weasel,  a  stoat  as  the  English 
would  call  it,  that  darted  away  from  behind  the  stone 
evidently  did  not  care  in  the  least  in  which  shire  he 
found  shelter! 

We  climbed  up  a  long  hill  through  a  stone-built 
village  with  mullion  windows,  where  flowers  were 
hanging  from  hilly  gardens  down  over  the  roadside 
walls,  for  the  cottages  were  high  above  the  road;  it 
was  a  memorably  long  hill  of  little  houses  and  it 
seems  to  us  that  this  was  the  first  village  in  which 


THE  HEART  OF  ENGLAND 207 

we  climbed  up  a  long  hill,  it  seeming  as  if  all  our 
other  experiences  with  village  hills  were  in  connection 
with  dodging  villagers  as  we  went  down. 

And  now  we  followed  for  a  few  miles  along  a  su- 
perb road,  and  then  swung  down  a  long,  long  curving 
highway,  looking  over  miles  of  country  that  was  haz- 
ily veiled  with  pale,  low-hanging  mist.  There  was 
a  skurry  of  rabbits  darting  off  into  holes  or  hedges, 
and  the  view  over  the  misted  country  was  every  mo- 
ment changing,  and  the  hill  kept  on  pleasantly 
lengthening  beneath  us,  and  toward  its  bottom  we 
caught  a  glimpse  of  white  stone  houses  with  red  roofs 
among  green  trees,  on  a  green,  green  plain;  and 
that  was  Broadway. 

Broadway  is  famous  as  being  the  home  of  famous 
people  who  have  lived  in  it  for  its  loveliness  and 
seclusion.  Poets  have  chosen  it,  and  artists  have 
loved  its  roof  lines  and  its  fascinating  stone  gables 
and  the  embowering  effects  of  ivy,  yews  and  roses, 
and  actors  have  spent  their  months  of  restfulness 
here.  And  it  is  peculiarly  a  satisfying  place,  not  only 
because  it  contains  so  much  of  the  positively  pic- 
turesque and  beautiful,  but  also  because  it  contains 
nothing  of  the  ugly  or  disagreeable.  And,  although 
some  of  the  houses  are  simple  cottages,  others,  al- 
though just  as  unobtrusive,  are  places  of  well-to-do 
and  comfortable  living.  A  few  Americans,  in  par- 
ticular Mary  Anderson  and  the  painter  Abbey,  long 
lived  here,  and  their  love  for  the  place  would  alone 
make  it  of  interest  to  their  compatriots. 

Of  course,  we  dined  on  Broadway!  Such  an  op- 
portunity was  not  lightly  to  be  missed;  and  we  re- 
member that  we  had  strawberries  and  cream,  which 
completed  the  effect  of  an  excellent  dinner  as  the 
fact  of  our  dining  on  Broadway  completed  the  effect 
of  our  visit. 

We  left  Broadway  by  way  of  little  nearby  Wil- 


208 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

lersley,  a  hamlet  with  a  horse-pond;  a  little  village, 
most  agreeable,  with  the  same  kind  of  old  houses  and 
old  windows  and  great  roses  that  we  have  been  ad- 
miring in  Broadway,  but  as  yet  unappropriated  by 
artistic  fashion  and  very  evidently  in  need  of  pre- 
liminary cleaning  and  furbishing  before  it  could  be- 
gin to  match  the  immaculateness  of  Broadway.  But 
it  pleased  us  to  pick  out,  in  fancy,  the  house  that 
would  make  the  most  beautiful  home. 

We  went  on,  over  a  stone-walled  road,  past  iso- 
lated houses  with  mullioned  windows,  past  a  frag- 
ment of  a  village  still  retaining  its  ancient  town- 
cross,  past  exquisite  gardens  of  June  flowers,  past 
little  cottages,  as  well  as  the  comfortable  homes  of 
unextravagant  prosperity; — and  even  the  little  cot- 
tages along  this  road  were  seldom  poor,  but  almost 
always  not  only  lovable  but  livable. 

There  were  great  apple  orchards,  there  were 
thatched  roofs  with  captivating  front  lines,  there  was 
a  fine,  yellow-fronted  Georgian  house  with  a  notable 
oval-rayed  window,  there  were  many  cattle  and  sheep, 
there  were  delightful  hedges  and  great  haystacks, 
there  was  many  and  many  a  pollarded  willow,  there 
were  splendid  market-gardens  with  huge  hampers  of 
willow  to  bear  the  products  to  market,  in  a  field  men 
were  shearing  sheep  in  the  twilight,  and  at  a  cottage 
door  a  young  father  was  cutting  his  boy's  hair  with 
all  the  delightful  simplicity  of  the  round-and-round 
principle. 

We  came  to  where  there  was  a  short  tearing  up  of 
the  road  for  repair  work,  and  red  flags  were  out  at 
quite  a  distance  from  each  end  of  the  dig-up,  and 
several  big,  red  lanterns  were  about  to  be  lit  for  the 
near-coming  darkness,  and  a  watchman  in  a  shelter 
was  ready  for  an  all-night  vigil. 

And  there  was  a  tack  from  a  rustic's  shoe  on  this 
road  that  gave  us  a  puncture,  easily  repaired ;  and  it 


A  Warwick  peacock  strutting  beside  peacocks  of  box 


The  part  of  Kexilworth  associated  with  Queen  Elizabeth 


THE  HEART  OF  ENGLAND 209 

was  noteworthy  to  us  as  being  the  very  first  punc- 
ture on  our  many  hundreds  of  miles  thus  far. 

We  were  close  to  Stratf ord-on- Avon ;  and  all  at 
once  a  slender  spire  appeared  as  if  it  had  suddenly 
shot  up  among  the  trees — and  it  was  the  spire  of 
Shakespeare's  church.  And  by  a  bridge  over  a  placid 
stream  we  motored  into  the  town. 


CHAPTER  XXI 

TO   FAMOUS   PLACES 

WE  woke  up  in  the  morning  in  Stratford  in 
a  room  with  a  wavering  oak-pohshed  floor 
and  a  dear  old  window  with  flowers  on  the 
sill,  and  went  down  a  stairway  with  an  old  tall  clock 
at  its  foot,  and  had  breakfast  in  an  old  oak-paneled 
room  with  beamed  ceiling,  which  we  had  all  to  our- 
selves— and  a  very  good  breakfast  it  was — and  we 
saw  dear  little  schoolboys,  each,  with  satchel  and  shin- 
ing morning  face,  creeping  like  snail  unwillingly  to 
school — only,  to  be  accurate,  these  were  hurrying 
brightly  along — and  we  noticed  that  they  all  turned 
in  through  the  passageway  of  an  old  black-and-white 
building  diagonally  across  from  us,  which  was  their 
school:  and  it  came  with  almost  a  shock  of  realiza- 
tion that  this  was  the  very  building,  the  very  school, 
to  which  little  Will  Shakespeare  carried  his  own 
satchel  of  books,  long  ago. 

It  is  remarkable  that  in  regard  to  a  man  of  whose 
personal  life  so  little  is  known  there  should  be  pre- 
served such  memorials  of  personal  interest  as  are  in 
Stratford.  The  house  in  which  he  was  born  has  been 
most  resonantly — there  is  really  no  other  word — re- 
stored, and  you  follow  a  resonant  voice  through  the 
rooms.  It  is  rather  hard  to  j)icture  this  as  the  real 
house,  and  one  finds  himself  almost  envying  Wash- 
ington Irving,  who  humorously  tells  of  finding  the 
house  rather  a  shabby  sort  of  place,  but  rich  in 
veritable  relics,  such  as  the  gun  with  which  Shake- 
speare actually  shot  the  deer,  the  sword  he  wore  when 

210 


TO  FAMOUS  PLACES 211 

he  played  Hamlet — or  was  it  the  Ghost? — and  the 
lantern  carried  by  the  real  Friar  Laurence  into  the 
tomb  of  Romeo  and  Juliet. 

The  old  half-timbered  Edward  the  Sixth  Grammar 
School,  where  Shakespeare  went  to  school,  is  a  place 
with  the  genuine  spirit  of  Shakespeare's  time.  The 
rooms  are  beamed  and  braced  and  primitive,  and  the 
boys  are  still  taught  in  the  same  old  rooms,  and  we 
are  told  to  peek  through  a  little  shutter,  made  for 
visitors,  so  that  their  Latin  verbs  and  their  mathe- 
matical struggles  shall  not  be  disturbed.  The  very 
hall  in  which  Shakespeare  saw  his  first  play  is  in  this 
building;  his  own  father,  who  was  a  man  of  affairs  in 
Stratford,  is  said  to  have  arranged  for  a  band  of 
strolling  players  to  come  here;  and  when  we  passed, 
on  our  way  out  to  Ann  Hathaway's  cottage,  a  stroll- 
ing band  of  eight  musicians,  we  could  almost  picture 
ourselves  as  being  in  the  Stratford  of  Shakespeare's 
day.  And,  indeed,  the  country  hereabouts  is  almost 
altogether  just  as  it  was  in  Shakespeare's  time.  It 
is  the  sweet  and  happy  England  that  he  knew.  We 
see  the  same  rich  fields  that  he  saw,  and  buttercups 
and  daisies  still  paint  the  meadows  with  delight. 

Nothing  could  be  more  satisfactorily  preserved 
than  the  cottage  of  Ann  Hathaway;  the  thatched 
roofed  house  with  tiny  dormer  windows,  and  thinnish 
crisscrossing  of  half-timbering,  and  adequate,  old- 
fashioned  garden,  full  of  towering  old-fashioned 
flowers  and  with  pathways  bordered  by  low-clipped 
box. 

The  cottage,  however,  is  rated  somewhat  too  ex- 
travagantly high,  and  we  understand  from  our  own 
experience  just  how  naturally  this  has  come  about, 
for  on  our  former  visits  to  England  we  found  that 
the  traveler  who  goes  up  and  down  the  country  by 
rail,  stopping  at  the  various  famous  places,  gets  the 
impression  that  Ann  Hathaway's  cottage  is  almost 


212 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

the  sole  survival  of  the  ancient,  picturesque  cottages, 
whereas,  on  a  motor  tour  through  the  country,  one 
sees  hundreds  of  such  cottages  and  becomes  a  con- 
noisseur of  their  beauty.  All  of  which  does  make  us 
more  content  to  remember  that  Shakespeare  was  a 
youth  under  age  when  he  married  the  mature  Ann. 

When  we  were  about  to  take  a  picture  of  the  gar- 
den and  house,  a  pound  was  immediately  demanded 
— or,  to  be  precise,  a  guinea — for  the  privilege,  and 
we  are  glad  to  be  able  to  say  that  a  much  more  sat- 
isfactory picture  than  could  possibly  have  been  taken 
from  within  the  palings  was  taken  by  standing  up 
on  the  seat  of  the  car  out  in  the  public  road. 

Most  important  of  all  the  mementos  of  Shake- 
speare is  the  church,  a  large,  old,  important  build- 
ing; not  merely  a  little  country  church,  as  one  is  so 
apt  to  imagine  it;  set  beside  the  broad  and  beauti- 
ful Avon,  within  the  quiet  silence  of  an  old  and 
ancient  churchyard — silence;  for  one  does  not  deem 
the  silence  broken  by  the  sweet  twittering  of  thrush 
and  blackbird,  or  even  by  the  pleasant  cawing  of  a 
couple  of  rooks,  and  most  assuredly  not  by  what 
seemed — but  the  idea  appeared  incredible — the  notes 
of  a  nightingale :  yet  the  verger,  when  asked  about  it, 
listens,  and  says,  yes,  that  it  is  a  nightingale,  for  now 
and  then  they  sometimes  sing  by  daylight  here,  in  the 
latter  half  of  June.  And  we  were  glad  that  we  were 
there  at  so  fortunate  a  time. 

Shakespeare  rests  so  near  the  altar  of  the  old 
church  because  he  was,  by  purchase,  one  of  the  lay 
rectors  of  the  church,  and  within  the  altar-rail  because 
the  rail  was  moved  outward  to  preserve  his  grave 
from  being  worn  by  millions  of  footsteps;  and  the 
bust  above  it  is  within  a  glass  case  because  it  was  not 
long  ago  discovered  that  it  was  set  so  loosely  against 
the  wall  that  any  vandal  could  have  lassoed  it  off. 

The  church  is  of  a  dignified  and  solemn  interior, 


TO  FAMOUS  PLACES 213 

and  across  the  river  from  it  are  great  level  stretches 
of  meadow;  and  we  gained  the  most  satisfactory  view 
of  all  by  looking  back  at  it  from  a  point  on  the  same 
side  of  the  river,  a  short  distance  away;  for  the  soft- 
moving  stream,  the  bordering  meadows  and  the  trees 
dipping  their  branches  in  the  water,  all  were  so  peace- 
ful and  agreeable,  and  the  church  spire  showed  so 
sweetly  in  the  watery  sunshine — for  it  had  tried  to 
rain  a  little  and  the  air  was  lightly  touched  with  a 
glimmering  mist — that  all  seemed  somehow  to  be 
subtly  suggestive  of  the  best  of  Shakespeare  and  of 
the  best  of  all  England. 

Through  a  soft-hued  bosky  country  we  went  on 
toward  Warwick,  eight  miles  away,  appreciating  to 
the  full  the  rich  beauty  of  the  landscape  and  the 
charm  of  the  green  and  grassy-bordered  highway, 
and  the  thick  clumps  of  elderflower,  and  the  proces- 
sional elms,  with  here  and  there  a  fine  old  house; 
such  as  one,  in  particular,  that  we  noticed,  timbered 
and  of  soft  yellow  brick,  with  an  old  garden-wall  bor- 
dered with  foxgloves;  and  in  passing  this  house  we 
caught,  through  the  open  window  of  a  room  near 
the  road,  a  glimpse  of  a  luncheon  table  spread  with 
old  silver  dishes  and  a  Georgian  silver  tea-urn. 

Warwick,  the  town  itself,  we  found  to  be  quite  a 
large  place,  with  houses  in  themselves  of  consider- 
able interest  and  with  the  long  main  street  lined  al- 
most solidly  with  antique  shops  and  tea-rooms,  which, 
although  placed  in  very  ancient  buildings,  did  man- 
age to  take  away  from  the  naturalness  of  the  place. 

We  found  the  town  gayly  alive  with  children,  for 
it  was  what  they  called  a  "  Sunday-school  treat  "  day, 
and  numberless  charabancs  packed  with  children  and 
alive  with  streamers  thronged  the  flag-hung  streets, 
all  of  which  gave  a  very  bright  and  pleasant  air  to 
the  ancient  place. 

One  of  the  old  town  gates  is  preserved,  islandlike, 


214 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

in  the  heart  of  main-street  traffic,  and  of  course  we 
went  to  see  the  doddering  old  houses  of  the  Leicester 
pensioners;  quaint-cloaked  old  men  who  are  pictures 
in  themselves  and  who  still  inhabit  these  projecting 
storied  houses  which  seem  on  the  very  point  of  top- 
pling out  into  the  street. 

But  one  goes  to  Warwick  for  Warwick  Castle;  a 
noble  old  structure  which  rises  proudly  from  the 
river,  a  castle  still  complete,  a  castle  which  is  at  the 
same  time  a  palace  rich  in  superb  masterpieces  of 
painting  and  tapestry  and  furniture,  a  castle  which 
is  still  a  home  that  is  adequately  lived  in. 

Tucked  away  among  the  noble  rooms  of  this  noble 
place  is  a  decorous,  ancient  private  chapel  which,  so 
they  tell  you,  is  the  only  private  chapel  still  in  use 
in  England  with  complement  of  private  chaplain  and 
service. 

One  leaves  Warwick  with  memories  of  grandeur 
and  great  gardens,  of  mighty  halls,  of  majestic  tow- 
ers, of  splendid  memorials  of  art  and  history,  of  the 
world-famed  Warwick  vase,  that  marvelous-shaped 
piece  of  white  marble  of  Bacchanalian  glory,  and  of 
live  peacocks  that  go  strutting  beside  peacocks  clipped 
from  box.  And  for  a  final  impression  we  motored 
to  an  old  stone  bridge,  with  notably  beautiful  stone 
balustrades,  and  from  this  point  looked  down  the 
brimming  Avon  and  past  the  great  trees,  whose 
shadows  go  reaching  down  into  the  water,  to  the 
splendid  castle  towers  that  lift  their  heads  so  proudly 
above  the  greenery,  defiant  of  time. 

In  this  kind  of  travel  one  is  always  coming  upon 
the  delightfully  unexpected  and  worth  while,  and 
in  motoring  the  short  five  miles  from  Warwick  to 
Kenilworth  we  came  to  a  great  mansion,  seen  across 
a  great  pond,  and  beside  the  pond  was  an  ancient 
stone  flour  mill,  with  its  ancient  water-wheel  still 
clacking  and  grinding  wheat.    And  here  again  there 


TO  FAJMOUS  PLACES 215 

is  thus  the  delightful  idea  of  an  ancient  place  still  in 
use  and  not  merely  kept  as  a  relic. 

Our  approach  to  Kenilworth  led  us  across  an  un- 
bridged  brook  that  rippled  across  the  road,  and  one 
gains  a  delightful  impression  of  old-time  days  by 
fording  a  stream  on  the  way  to  such  an  ancient  place ; 
and  it  did  seem  odd  to  ford  a  Kenilworth  stream  with 
a  motor  car. 

We  have  found  that  there  are  two  kinds  of  places 
particularly  worth  seeing — the  places  where  every- 
body goes  and  those  where  nobody  goes:  it  is  ex- 
ceedingly worth  while  to  go  to  the  places  where  no 
other  travelers  go,  because  there  is  the  pleasure  of 
novelty  and  discovery,  and  to  those  where  everybody 
goes  so  as  not  to  miss  the  localities  that  have  been 
famous  for  generations.  Kenilworth  is  one  of  the 
worth-while  places  where  everybody  goes,  and  we 
approached  the  entrance  through  a  deferential  dou- 
ble line  of  self -offering  guides  and  of  vendors  of 
guide-books  and  picture  postcards,  and  there  was 
seated  a  little  away  from  these  on  the  green  a  verita- 
ble Goody-Two- Shoes  in  red  cloak,  weathered  like  a 
tile  roof,  and  a  scoop  bonnet,  and  she  was  surrounded 
with  a  semicircle  of  little  flat  baskets  full  of  straw- 
berries piled  in  little  piles;  and  just  such  a  cottage 
goody  doubtless  sat  there  in  the  days  of  Queen 
EHzabeth. 

Kenilworth,  long  one  of  the  mightiest  castles  of 
England,  still  shows  ruins  of  immense  extent,  and 
the  stupendous  Norman  portion,  the  oldest  of  all, 
is  still  the  strongest  of  all. 

We  think  of  what  literature  may  do  for  a  place; 
for  Scott  so  peopled  this  castle  with  human  life  that 
every  visitor  goes  about  speculating  just  where 
Queen  Elizabeth  walked,  where  Amy  Robsart  was 
hidden  away,  where  Leicester  and  all  the  others 
feasted  and  intrigued. 


216 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

There  were  only  a  few  people  inside  the  castle 
ruins,  not  so  many  in  number  as  the  vendors  at  the 
gate,  and  each  of  the  few  seemed  to  be  plucking  a 
sprig  of  Kenilworth  ivy  to  take  home  to  grow;  no 
doubt  pretty  nearly  every  visitor  has  been  doing  this 
for  generations,  but  still  there  is  enough  ivy  to  hold 
up  the  walls! 

Everyone  who  would  tour  by  motor  with  satisfac- 
tion must  learn  always  to  feel  a  sense  of  rest,  whether 
going  rapidly  over  roads  or  attentively  visiting  a 
ruin;  he  must  never  let  a  sense  of  haste  disturb  him, 
or  considerations  of  how  many  miles  he  must  still 
make  that  day,  for  thus  the  principal  advantages  and 
the  keenest  pleasures  of  his  travel  would  be  lost :  and 
here  at  Kenilworth,  though  our  stay  was  not  long, 
we  found  the  time  adequate  to  lose  ourselves  in  im- 
pressions of  the  beauty,  the  dignity,  the  grim  gran- 
deur, the  romance,  of  these  noble  square-windowed 
fragments  of  pale-red  stone  in  their  deep-green  drap- 
ery. We  went  down  into  dungeons,  we  twisted  up 
spiral  stairs  into  towers,  we  went  through  great  halls 
and  pleasant  little  rooms  that  must  have  been  delight- 
ful to  live  in,  and  we  walked  over  the  cushiony  turf 
and  watched  the  sheep  in  the  Norman  keep.  Ajid  we 
went  out  past  the  stately  Tudor  Gatehouse  by  which 
we  had  entered,  and  thought  that  it  was  exactly  what 
the  Earl  of  Leicester's  part  of  Kenilworth  must  have 
looked  like. 

Our  road  onward  led  us  past  a  picturesque  row  of 
little  old  houses,  and  looking  back  we  saw,  what  we 
had  not  before  realized,  that  the  castle  was  built  on 
a  height.  The  road  from  Kenilworth  to  Coventry  is 
said  by  the  English  to  be  one  of  the  two  finest  roads 
in  England,  and  with  typical  English  humor  they 
follow  this  with  the  statement  that  the  next  best  is 
the  road  from  Coventry  to  Kenilworth!  Well,  it  is 
an  extremely  fine  five-mile  stretch,  but  no  better  than 


TO  FAMOUS  PLACES 217 

many  other  stretches  that  we  have  found;  however, 
it  is  much  wider  than  most,  and  is  bordered,  as 
Coventry  is  approached,  by  superb  rows  of  parallel- 
ing trees. 

Even  if  Tennyson  had  not  spoken  of  the  three 
spires  as  marking  Coventry,  everyone  would  remem- 
ber the  city  in  just  that  way.  The  three  old  churches 
stand  astonishingly  near  together  and  one  wonders 
why  three  parish  churches  could  ever  have  been  built 
thus  touching  each  other's  elbows.  Down  in  the 
shadow  of  them  is  an  ancient  school  where  you  see 
as  pretty  a  touch  of  costume  as  there  is  in  all  Eng- 
land ;  it  is  a  school  for  little  orphan  girls,  who  are  clad 
in  a  costume  of  Queen  Anne's  time:  in  their  bright- 
blue  gowns,  their  long  mustard-colored  mitts,  their 
white  chip  hats  tied  under  their  chins,  their  little  white 
kerchiefs  and  their  silver-buckled  shoes,  they  seem  to 
have  walked,  two  and  two,  from  some  fascinating 
old  print  and  out  under  the  trees  of  Coventry. 

There  are  many  narrow  old  streets  in  Coventry, 
with  quite  a  number  of  shabby,  ancient  houses,  but 
it  has  become  quite  a  manufacturing  center  and  is 
prosperous,  and  it  illustrates  the  grim  truth  that  pros- 
perity always  has  poverty  in  its  train,  for  one  sees 
much  of  dreariness  and  misery. 

We  have  so  often  felt  in  veritable  touch  with  the 
past,  in  various  places  that  we  have  seen,  that  when 
we  entered  Coventry  and  drove  down  its  main  street 
and  past  its  notable  old  guild-hall,  we  could  almost 
believe  that  we  were  back  in  the  time  of  Godiva,  for 
every  business  front  was  shuttered  tight!  But  the 
Godiva-like  shuttering  was  only,  after  all,  the  effect 
of  a  Thursday-afternoon  closing. 

Going  on,  out  of  Coventry,  we  dipped  a  little  south- 
ward by  the  London  road  so  as  to  pass  through 
Rugby,  and  we  think  this  was  more  for  the  sake  of 
"  Tom  Brown's  School  Days  "  than  for  the  sake  of 


218 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

the  school  itself;  and  as  we  started  on  our  way  we 
noticed  with  interest  that  there  were  great  fields, 
divided  into  tiny  patches  for  vegetable  gardens,  for 
the  poor  people  of  Coventry,  and  it  was  clear  that  the 
patches  were  indefatigably  cultivated.  The  London 
road  was  another  broad  highway,  and  such  roads  are 
easy  to  travel  by  contrast  with  the  prevalent  narrow, 
twisting,  high-hedged,  dangerous,  altogether  charm- 
ing roads  of  which  we  have  had  so  many,  many  de- 
lightful miles. 

As  the  days  go  by  each  seems  more  full  of  inter- 
est than  any  day  before,  and  we  feel  that  we  have  be- 
come systematic  campaigners.  We  start  as  early  in 
the  morning  as  we  can  get  breakfast,  which  is  sel- 
dom early,  we  look  forward  with  anticipation  to  what 
the  day  is  to  bring  forth,  and  when  evening  ap- 
proaches find  that  it  has  always  been  opulent  of 
experiences. 

We  remember,  as  we  go  on  toward  Rugby,  that 
this  is  a  hunting  district,  and  we  notice  not  only  the 
broad  road,  but  the  broad  spaces  of  grass  between  the 
roadway  and  the  hedges  and  are  told  that  this  is  a 
peculiarly  desirable  condition  for  the  hunters  and 
horses;  and  for  long  distances  there  was  seldom  a 
house  to  be  seen,  and  then  it  was  usually  a  comfort- 
able and  prosperous  one,  but  not  extravagantly  so. 

Rugby  itself  is  a  place  with  fine,  modern  school 
buildings,  and  but  little  atmosphere,  and  the  typical 
caps  of  the  students  are  almost  foolishly  faddish;  but 
it  was  quite  Tom  Brownish  to  see  some  of  the  lads  on 
the  cricket-field,  and  they  were  a  very  wholesome  set 
of  youth  and  we  liked  them  better  than  those  of  Win- 
chester, and  on  the  whole  we  went  out  of  Rugby  with 
a  rather  pleasant  impression  in  our  minds  and  the 
sound  of  some  particularly  fine-toned  chimes  in  our 
ears. 

From  here  to  Market  Harborough  we  had  a  choice 


TO  FAMOUS  PLACES 219 

of  roads;  one  we  were  told  was  hilly  and  twisty  and 
the  other  longer  but  more  level,  and  that  it  was  a 
case  of  the  longer  being  the  shorter,  and  so  we  took 
the  longer.  Hereabouts  the  roadside  and  fields  are 
much  more  like  those  of  America  than  any  we  have 
seen  so  far,  even  to  the  sight  of  the  chopping  up  of 
quite  a  number  of  large  trees. 

Nearing  a  little  place  called  Lutterworth,  we 
swung  for  a  short  distance  through  an  avenue  that 
was  superbly  beautiful  with  overarching  trees,  and 
we  caught  glimpses  of  the  mansion  of  the  Earl  of 
Denbigh,  and  then  we  went  on  through  plainer  re- 
gions, with  great  open  fields  and  with  hedges  un- 
usually low,  and  we  passed  another  pack  of  hounds, 
these  in  course  of  being  trained  and  exercised  by  their 
liveried  keepers,  and  it  was  interesting  to  note  the 
leashed  puppies,  their  feet  still  much  too  big  for  them, 
supernaturally  big-eyed  and  eager.  All  this  is  still 
hunting  country,  and  indeed  a  fox  could  be  seen  over 
these  fields  for  a  very  long  distance. 

We  passed  one  estate  whose  road  fencing  was  all 
white  with  every  post  humorously  painted  red.  And 
over  yonder,  but  a  few  miles  away,  was  the  spot 
where  the  Cavaliers  fought  so  gallantly  but  vainly  at 
Naseby. 

The  rare  villages  grow  comparatively  unattractive 
and  bare,  and  at  length  toward  evening  we  motor 
into  a  plain  and  pleasant,  thrifty  little  place  called 
Market  Harborough,  and  go  up  its  broad  street  of 
little,  quiet  shops,  past  an  exceptionally  attractive, 
ancient,  little  arcaded  market-place  in  the  market 
square,  and  stop  at  an  inn  with  a  remarkably  large 
and  beautiful  old  swan  sign  projecting  beyond  the 
rows  of  little  bowed  windows  and  out  even  beyond  the 
sidewalk.  We  so  fell  in  love  with  this  old  wrought- 
iron  sign  that  we  naturally  expressed  our  admiration 
to  the  innkeeper,  whereupon  we  learned  that  local 


220 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

pride  has  it  that  it  is  the  finest  old  wrought-iron  sign 
in  England! 

And  this  inn  had,  as  we  noticed,  what  we  have  so 
often  noticed  to  be  a  feature  of  old  inns  of  England, 
for  it  had  within  it  a  large  quantity  of  antique  furni- 
ture, really  in  daily  use  as  furniture  and  not  put  there 
for  show.  It  would  be  amazing  if  a  full  inventory 
could  be  taken  of  the  old  tables  and  chairs  and  tall 
clocks  and  chests  of  drawers  and  settees  and  side- 
boards and  china  and  tea-urns  and  wine-coolers  of 
even  such  old  inns  as  we  have  already  been  in  on  this 
journey,  for  the  total  would  furnish  forth  the  cargo 
of  many  a  Mayflower,  even  if  each  one  carried  as 
much  old  furniture  as  that  single  ship  did  if  every- 
thing known  as  a  Mayflower  relic  were  veritable. 

The  coach-yard  of  the  inn  was  cobble-stoned  and 
lined  with  brick  walls  with  entrances  that  seemed  to 
lead  into  all  sorts  of  coach  houses,  stables  and  serv- 
ants' quarters ;  a  long  and  narrow  yard  it  was,  with  its 
entrance  under  the  building  itself,  and  far  off  at  the 
other  end  a  gateway  into  a  surprising  walled  garden, 
where  potatoes  and  asparagus  were  growing  thick 
and  rich,  bordered  round  and  round  by  profusely 
growing  wall-roses,  which  made  what  would  have 
been  a  prosaic  garden  into  a  veritable  place  of 
beauty.  And  in  the  morning,  after  the  very  reason- 
able bill  had  been  presented  and  we  were  ready  to 
start,  a  pretty  maid  handed  to  each  of  us  a  bunch  of 
exquisite  roses. 


CHAPTER  XXII 

TO  FOTHEEINGAY  AND  THE  FENS 

AS  we  went  off  through  a  pleasant  roUing  coun- 
try, a  silvery  mist  lay  lightly  on  the  nearby 
fields  and  delicately  hid  the  distances.  We 
went  through  a  charming  little  thatch-roofed  village 
with  all  the  thatch  silvered  mistily,  and  here  and 
there,  as  we  went  farther  on,  a  silver  spire  showed 
dimly.  We  passed  a  solitary  yellow  house,  with  its 
front  remarkably  espaliered  with  abundant  white 
roses,  and  went  on  over  a  high  and  almost  level  road 
through  fields  and  trees  grouped  casually  but  as  if 
with  park-planned  effect.  A  colt  was  prancing  be- 
side its  mother.  A  clump  of  deer  ran  in  delicate  un- 
expectedness across  a  delicate  glade,  appearing  out 
of  mystery  and  instantly  vanishing  into  mystery 
again.  There  came  a  fine  fresh  breeze  that  curiously 
did  not  blow  away  the  mist.  We  passed  by  stone 
walls  gray  with  mosses,  and  hedges  that  were  all  of 
a  wild-rose  glow,  and  a  village  was  casually  seen, 
that  was  almost  hidden  in  the  curious  English  fashion 
that  so  often  puts  towns  and  villages  quite  away  from 
the  highwaj^s.  It  was  odd,  hereabouts,  to  see  farm- 
ers plowing  with  two  horses  tandem  and  harrowing 
with  three  horses  tandem;  and  it  was  pretty  to  see 
blood-red  poppies  scattered  over  fields  of  grain. 
Then  with  entire  unexpectedness  a  blast  furnace  was 
in  view,  with  fire  flaming  up  and  the  smoke  rising 
high  and  straight  in  tall  columns,  and  yet  we  were 
now  in  a  village  that  still  had  many  a  thatched  roof 
and  many  a  flower-garden  and  blossoming  rose.    In 

221 


222 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

all,  the  experience  made  a  striking  contrast  between 
lonely  attractiveness  and  conspicuous  industry. 

In  the  village  were  little  shops  with  signs  of 
"  Penny  Monster,"  which,  we  may  remark,  is  only 
a  sweetie  for  children,  and  there  were  boys  and  girls 
doing  gymnastic  exercises  outdoors  under  their 
teacher,  and  in  a  few  minutes  we  were  out  in  the 
country  again  and  running  through  a  fine  farmland, 
with  now  and  then  sheep  or  cattle  or  a  man  driving 
a  two-wheeled  cart,  or  a  youth  on  a  bicycle — although 
it  would  be  just  about  as  likely  in  England  to  be  an 
old  man  on  a  bicycle  as  a  youth. 

We  continued  through  miles  of  rural  picturesque- 
ness  and  we  came  to  a  positively  magnificent  double 
avenue  of  trees  leading  to  some  great  house;  "  Biggin 
'All "  we  were  told  it  was,  by  a  man  with  a  high- 
heaped  load  of  wood  drawn  by  horses  with  enormous 
feet  and  a  bushel  of  shag  at  each  fetlock,  a  type  of 
draught-horse  that  is  very  common  in  England.  We 
came  to  little  Oundle,  one  of  the  host  of  overlooked 
and  interesting  little  places,  a  fine  little  town,  with 
houses  of  old  gray  stone  and  roofs  of  stone  slabs  that 
were  a  little  darker,  and  some  of  the  houses  were 
extremely  attractive. 

And  there  was  a  curious  old  inn  here,  the  Talbot, 
built  when  King  James  ordered  the  castle  of 
Fotheringay  razed,  and  largely  constructed  out  of 
Fotheringay  material.  The  windows  of  the  ban- 
queting hall  are  here,  and  two  stories  of  a  superb 
old  stairway  of  black  oak,  up  and  down  which  Mary 
Queen  of  Scots  must  have  walked,  and  there  is  also 
paneling  from  Fotheringay,  and  tradition  has  it,  and 
there  is  nothing  unlikely  about  it,  that  a  swinging 
gate  in  the  balusters  at  the  head  of  the  stair  was 
walked  through  by  the  ill-fated  Mary  on  her  way  to 
execution. 

It  is  a  most  curious  thing  that  so  much  of  van- 


FOTHERINGAY  AND  THE  FENS  223 

ished  Fotheringay  is  thus  preserved  in  this  hotel,  and 
it  was  by  the  merest  chance  that  we  heard  of  it. 

Less  than  four  miles  away  we  found  the  site  of 
Fotheringay;  the  place  where  came  to  an  end  the 
career  of  one  of  the  most  beautiful  and  attractive 
women  of  history;  a  queen  whose  memory  is  cher- 
ished with  romantic  interest  by  the  world ;  and  never 
was  there  a  more  complete  destruction  than  that 
wreaked  by  James  on  the  place  where  his  mother  was 
executed.  Literally  not  one  stone  remains  upon  an- 
other ;  more  than  this,  hterally  only  one  stone  remains 
at  all,  and  that  is  inclosed  within  an  iron  rail  to  mark 
the  very  spot  of  Mary's  death. 

An  abrupt  knoll  by  the  side  of  a  quiet  stream,  with 
densely  verdant  meadows  stretching  off  on  the  farther 
side,  is  where  the  castle  stood.  A  queer,  little  yellow 
flower,  locally  named  eggs-and-bacon  and  remindful 
of  our  own  butter-and-eggs,  grows  freely  on  the 
knoll;  and  we  disturbed  a  colony  of  enormous  bees 
there;  and  the  only  forget-me-nots  that  we  have  so 
far  noticed  growing  wild  in  England  were  growing 
by  the  waterside;  and  wild  ducks  were  swimming 
about  and  there  were  elderflowers  and  enormous  old 
thorn  trees,  and  great  rushes  swayed  gently  at  the 
edge  of  the  stream ;  and  there  was  a  sense  of  complete 
isolation,  of  loneliness,  although  we  saw  the  peace- 
ful little  village  of  Fotheringay  near  by  with  its  roofs 
showing  among  the  trees,  and  although  a  little  above 
the  roofs  rose  the  tower  of  a  large  and  extremely 
beautiful  church,  which  was  old  even  when  Queen 
Mary  was  here,  and  from  the  top  of  which  there  used 
nightly  to  shine  a  lantern  to  guide  travelers  through 
the  defiles  of  an  enormous  forest  that  was  hereabouts. 
It  is  not  altogether  fancy  that  a  sense  of  tragedy 
pervades  the  whole  place,  village  and  all. 

Mary  was  allowed  to  go  out  at  times  under  guard, 
and  she  must  certainly  have  crossed  an  arching  old 


224 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

bridge  that  we  see  from  the  castle  site,  and  one  fan- 
cies that  it  was  there  that  Queen  Elizabeth  watched 
her;  for  an  old  tradition,  firmly  believed,  has  it  that 
Elizabeth  wished  to  see  personally  her  royal  rival,  at 
length  in  her  power,  and  went  in  disguise  and  waited 
on  a  roadside  not  far  from  Fotheringay  to  see  Mary 
pass. 

Leaving  Fotheringay,  we  followed  roads  that 
showed  us  we  were  in  a  once  marshy  region,  and  we 
noticed  a  long  footpath  causeway  for  flood-time  and 
then  were  off  for  Peterborough,  on  the  road  over 
which  Queen  Mary  must  have  been  carried  for  her 
burial  there,  to  remain  until  her  son  became  king  and 
carried  her  body  to  Westminster. 

We  entered  the  city  of  Peterborough  over  a  grade 
crossing,  the  seventh  grade  crossing  we  have  crossed 
to-day,  into  an  unattractive  part  of  the  city,  and  went 
on  into  an  ordinary  every-day  part,  with  no  sign  of 
age  or  beauty  or  interest;  so  far  it  was  a  less  than 
ordinary  modern  town ;  and  then  we  came  to  an  open 
square,  on  one  side  of  which  was  an  ancient  little 
market  building  with  open  arches,  and  facing  it  was 
an  ancient  gateway  of  crumbling  stone,  and  we  drove 
through  this  narrow  ancient  gateway  and  were  at  the 
front  of  a  superb  cathedral,  with  three  great  recessed 
arches  across  its  squarish  front  and  little  pointed 
towers  above.  Unexpected,  after  such  a  facade,  was 
the  effect  of  the  Norman  rounded  arches  in  the 
interior;  and  it  impressed  us  as  a  cathedral  of  great 
dignity,  although  it  possesses  a  timber  roof. 

Katherine  of  Aragon,  after  her  divorce,  lived  out 
her  life  near  Peterborough,  and  is  buried  in  this 
cathedral,  but  her  monument  is  interesting  rather 
than  historic,  as  it  was  built  long  after  her  day  by 
contributions  from  all  the  Katherines  in  England. 

We  left  Peterborough  across  great  levels  of  ditches 
and  drained  farmland,  with  now  and  then  a  pictur- 


FOTHERINGAY  AND  THE  FENS  225 

esque  home  surrounded  by  tall  trees,  and  came  to 
Crowland,  another  example  of  the  interest  that  may 
be  found  in  places  one  never  heard  of. 

In  the  center  of  the  unprosperous,  shrunken  little 
place  is  a  most  remarkable  bridge,  to  which  the  word 
"  unique  "  most  certainly  applies.  It  is  a  triangular 
bridge,  and  has  three  fronts,  and  three  ways  over  it, 
and  three  ways  under  it.  Originally,  water  ran  be- 
neath, but  now  there  is  dry  roadway  there.  It  is 
a  curious  bridge,  and  a  thousand  years  old,  they  say, 
and  the  three  roads  that  rise  to  a  height  in  the  center 
are  to  such  an  extent  just  stone  stairs  that  the  local 
belief  is  strong  that  only  foot  passengers  could  ever 
have  crossed.  It  seemed  to  us,  however,  that  an  agile 
saddle-horse  or  pack-horse  would  be  quite  equal  to 
it.  Israel  Putnam  would  certainly  not  have  balked 
at  it!  Now,  sitting  there  in  the  middle  of  the  dry 
highway  with  its  three  separate  roads  meeting  at  the 
top  of  it,  the  bridge  is  a  most  astonishing  and  mys- 
terious thing. 

Away  up,  quite  at  the  far  end  of  the  place,  is  the 
very  ancient  Abbey  of  Crowland,  facing  down  the 
road  back  into  the  village.  The  abbey  has  sadly 
fallen  to  decay,  and  the  sinking  of  the  fenny  ground 
beneath  it  makes  it  tip  threateningly  toward  one  side ; 
and  in  niches  upon  its  tipping,  ruinous  facade  little 
ancient  stone  saints  still  stand  with  a  very  tragic  and 
saddening  effect. 

Several  dry-looking  and  very  ancient  old  men,  each 
with  a  fringe  of  white  whiskers,  were  leaning  on  their 
sticks  and  intently  watching  us.  Their  age  and  de- 
crepitude seemed  characteristic  of  the  village,  and  it 
was  a  pleasure  to  see  how  readily  they  responded  to 
an  invitation  to  step  inside  of  the  building  against 
which  they  were  sunning  themselves  as  they  watched 
us.  "  We  are  all  over  seventy-six,"  said  one,  his  hand 
shaking  as  he  lifted  his  glass:  and  the  tavern-keeper 


226 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

joined  in  with:  "  If  you'd  only  let  me  know,  I'd  'ave 
'ad  twenty-five  of  'em  in  'ere,  all  over  eighty! " 

Leaving  Crowland,  we  ran  for  twenty-five  miles 
over  a  level  land,  much  of  the  time  on  a  dykelike  road 
and  with  neither  fences  nor  hedges  but  with  ditches 
instead,  and  with  the  fields  dotted  with  cattle,  for 
this  is  all  a  fen  country  and  much  of  it  has  been  re- 
claimed from  the  sea;  the  great  North  Sea  inlet 
known  as  the  Wash  cutting  into  the  country  on  our 
right.  We  noticed  that  the  region  was  much  like 
Holland,  and  naturally  enough,  for  Hollanders  long 
ago  drained  these  fens;  and  then  we  thought  of 
America  when  we  saw  women  and  girls  wearing  close- 
fitting  white  sunbonnets  such  as  were  assuredly  the 
originals  of  the  sunbonnets  of  New  England;  and 
we  went  through  Pinchbeck,  which  looked  plain  and 
substantial  and  not  at  all  as  if  justifying  its  name! — 
and  through  little  Surfleet,  noticeable  only  for  an 
amazingly  out-of-perpendicular  church  tower:  *''but 
the  foundations  stopped  settling  hundreds  of  years 
ago,"  said  a  villager  contentedly. 

On  this  fen-land  run  we  saw  so  many  old  churches 
of  a  type  that  would  go  fittingly  in  American  cities, 
admirable  and  even  beautiful  churches,  quite  possible 
in  size  and  cost  for  reproduction,  that  it  seemed  a 
pity  that  American  architects  do  not  oftener  follow 
them;  and  at  length,  rising  high  over  the  fen  coun- 
try, there  came  in  sight  a  tall  and  beautiful  tower, 
and  we  could  not  but  feel  thrilled,  as  Americans,  for 
we  were  looking  at  the  tower  of  Boston,  the  home  of 
the  Pilgrim  Fathers. 

We  came  to  the  edge  of  the  city  by  crossing  our 
fourteenth  railroad  grade  crossing  for  the  day's  run 
of  just  over  seventy  miles  ("no  grade  crossings  in 
England!"),  and  went  into  Boston,  naturally 
enough,  past  a  sort  of  Back  Bay,  with  boats  that 
were  stranded  in  the  mud ;  a  tidal  river  runs  through 


FOTHERINGAY  AND  THE  FENS  227 

Boston  and  the  tide  rises  very  high  and  runs  out  very 
low.  And  we  found  an  excellent  hotel,  with  a  view 
of  river  and  church;  and  it  is  really  worth  while  say- 
ing that  we  had  an  adequate  and  complete  dinner, 
with  no  makeshift  of  ham  or  even  chop ! 

We  walked  about  Boston  in  the  evening;  it  is  al- 
ways such  a  pleasure  to  gain  one's  impression  of  a 
place  on  the  evening  of  arrival ;  and  we  had  the  curi- 
ous feeling  of  having  been  there  before  or  at  least  as 
if  the  city  belonged  to  us. 

Service  was  going  on  in  the  old  church,  St.  Botolph's, 
and  the  dim  lights  and  the  organ  music  and  the  sing- 
ing were  finely  effective.  We  stood  beneath  the  high- 
groined  roof  of  the  tower,  which  rose  one  hundred 
and  forty  feet  sheer  above  us,  and,  although  in  that 
light  we  could  not  see  details,  there  was  a  curiously 
strong  impression  of  age  and  extreme  beauty  in  the 
towered  dimness. 

We  spent  the  next  forenoon  in  Boston  and  found 
it,  naturally,  a  place  full  of  interest,  although  most 
of  the  very  old  buildings  have  gone.  The  beautiful 
church  tower,  strongly  remindful  of  that  of  Antwerp, 
dominates  everything;  and  how  the  Pilgrims  must 
have  realized  what  they  were  giving  up  as  they  left 
behind  them  what  was  even  then  a  flourishing  city 
and  caught  the  last  glimpse  of  this  old  tower!  Al- 
though the  early  leaders  went  first  to  Holland  and 
thence  to  America,  at  least  nine  hundred  in  all  went 
directly  from  this  city,  and  the  old  place  must  have 
sorely  felt  the  drain. 

Next  to  the  church,  the  most  interesting  old  build- 
ing is  the  guild-hall,  a  fascinating  old  building  with 
some  exquisite  remains  of  linen-pattern  doors  and 
paneling,  and  with  a  fine  hall,  and  the  great  old-time 
kitchens  with  ancient  fireplaces  and  great  iron  kettles 
and  iron  trivets;  and  we  see  the  very  room  in  which 
some  of  the  Pilgrim  Fathers  were  tried  and  the  dark 


228 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

cells  in  which  they  were  imprisoned.  One  under- 
stands why  these  men  led  a  pilgrimage  to  found  a 
newer  Boston! 

It  is  a  city  of  fascinating  impressions  for  any 
American.  It  is  now  a  very  quiet  place,  and  the 
very  warehouses  along  the  waterfront — the  city  be- 
ing four  or  five  miles  from  the  Wash — are  suggestive 
of  New  England ;  and  down  in  this  warehouse  district 
is  the  home  of  Jean  Ingelow,  a  large  Georgian  house 
with  squat  dormers;  and  one  suddenly  realizes  that 
this  is  the  Boston  of  her  verse,  and  that  the  soft-toned 
bells  to  which  we  have  listened  are  the  bells  that  rang 
the  "  Brides  of  Enderby  "  in  that  terrible  time  of 
flood  when  the  seawall  broke. 

In  the  pleasant,  open  market-place  of  Boston, 
bright  with  flowers  and  fresh  fruits — good  markets 
are  a  tradition  of  the  American  Boston ! — we  had  our 
only  colHsion  of  the  entire  journey;  and  it  was  not 
precisely  a  collision  at  that;  for  our  car  was  stand- 
ing still,  when  an  English  motorist  rounded  a  market 
wagon,  in  that  swift  and  careless  way  that  we  have 
noticed  with  so  many  English  motorists,  and  rammed 
in  under  our  mudguard  and  then  quickly  backed  off 
and  tried  to  run  away,  but  the  indignant  market  peo- 
ple and  a  friendly  policeman  stopped  him  and  he  re- 
turned, crestfallen,  and  fortunately  it  appeared  that 
he  had  all  the  damage,  to  the  great  glee  of  the  by- 
standers and  ourselves! 

We  went  on  over  miles  of  fenny  levels,  past  wind- 
mills and  long  dykes  and  canals  and  meadows,  and 
through  Swineshead,  a  trifling  cluster  of  little  houses, 
but  notable  as  the  place  where  King  John,  whom 
everybody  hated,  was  poisoned  by  a  monk;  the  grim, 
old  local  story  has  it  that  the  King  cruelly  boasted 
that  he  would  raise  the  price  of  bread,  whereupon  the 
monk  told  the  abbot  that,  for  the  sake  of  his  coun- 
trymen, he  would  give  the  King  such  a  wassail  that 


The  cricket-field  at  Rugby 


.^,    :. ---^  __. 

A   REMARKABLE    WROUGHT-IROX  ThE       OLD       BUILDING       IXTO       WHICH 

IKX    SIGX  MUCH     OF     FoTHERIKGAY     WAS     BUILT 


The    site    of    Fotheringay    Castle,   where    Mary    Queex    of    Scots    was 

beheaded 


FOTHERINGAY  AND  THE  FENS  229 

all  England  should  be  glad,  and  set  about  giving  it 
to  him.  The  story  is  full  of  grim  details  of  a  toad 
and  a  tankard  of  ale,  and  we  thought  of  it  again  when, 
a  little  farther  on,  we  reached  Sleaford,  which  King 
John  was  able  to  reach  before  he  died. 

But  there  is  no  indication  now,  hereabouts,  of  old- 
time  tragedy.  There  are  little  cottages  with  clothes 
drying  on  the  hedges,  and  pinafored  women  at  their 
doors,  and  we  notice  a  great  windmill  with  the  as- 
tonishing number  of  eight  arms,  and  a  young  woman 
passes  us  bicycling  to  market  with  her  basket  on  her 
arm,  without  a  hat  and  in  her  long,  unbelted  apron. 
And  just  when  we  begin  to  think  that  any  more  fen- 
land  might  be  monotonous,  the  fens  cease  and  we 
enter  a  rolling  country  of  superb  great  farms,  su- 
perbly cultivated.  And  we  pass  close  to  the  road- 
side an  enormous  pillar  a  hundred  or  more  feet  high, 
which  looks  as  if  it  must  commemorate  some  great 
event,  and  of  course  we  must  stop  and  investigate, 
and  we  find  that  it  had  been  put  up  in  the  long  ago 
on  a  wager,  just  to  prove  that  a  lofty  column  could 
be  built  on  a  prescribed  narrow  base,  and  that,  once 
up,  it  was  long  used  as  a  beacon  light  to  guide  people 
over  the  heath  and  fens,  and  that  finally  a  George 
the  Third  statue  was  put  there  to  make  what  the 
English  would  call  real  use  of  it ;  all  of  which  struck 
us  as  beautifully  absurd. 

Thirty-six  miles  out  of  Boston  we  motored  into 
Lincoln,  and  made  our  way  to  the  cathedral ;  a  splen- 
did towered  and  towering  mass  of  yellow  and  gray 
on  the  top  of  a  steep  hill  that  was  all  red  and  green 
with  brick  houses  and  trees;  and  it  is  a  cathedral  that 
fills  the  eye  and  the  imagination. 

Lincoln  is  a  large,  compact  and  busy  city,  and  we 
found  the  narrow  streets  congested;  but  it  was  of 
more  importance,  after  threading  these  streets  for 
quite  a  distance,  to  find  that  the  final  climbing  was 


230 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

much  too  nearly  perpendicular  to  attempt,  even 
though  we  found  a  hill  street  without  the  barring 
posts  that  forbid  driving;  and  for  the  last  part  of 
the  ascent  we  walked  up  a  stairwayed  passageway 
called  a  street. 

Because  of  the  very  magnificence  of  the  cathedral 
and  the  general  prosperity  of  the  city  we  could  not 
but  notice  the  poverty  and  squalor  that  had  crept 
close  to  this  mighty  structure  in  the  poor  little  homes 
of  the  narrow  hill-streets  leading  up  to  it  as  if  in- 
deed reaching  up  in  heartbreak  toward  all  this  mag- 
nificence at  the  top. 

But  when  one  looks  at  the  square-towered,  mar- 
velous-fronted cathedral  itself  all  thoughts  vanish, 
except  those  that  come  from  the  splendor,  the  gran- 
deur, the  nobility  of  it;  and  the  interior  is  almost 
equally  striking  in  its  perfection  and  dignity.  This 
is  one  of  the  most  noble  cathedrals  of  England,  and 
one  lingers  in  it  and  beside  it,  fascinated  by  the  glory 
of  it  all. 

It  does  not  have  nearly  so  many  personal  asso- 
ciations as  numbers  of  the  minor  cathedrals  have, 
but  here  one  does  not  miss  such  things;  Lincoln 
Cathedral  is  so  great,  and  so  full  of  the  sense  of  its 
centuries  of  age,  and  so  nobly  situated,  that  one  feels 
no  shortcoming  in  the  absence  of  the  usual  personal 
memories,  for  such  a  cathedral  is  above  persons. 

Leaving  Lincoln,  as  in  entering  it,  we  passed 
through  one  of  the  ancient  town  gates — an  old  town 
gate  seems  forever  to  frame  any  town  in  the  memory ! 
— and  we  were  off  in  the  country  again,  and  for  some 
time  ran  once  more  into  fen-land,  and  we  drove  for 
miles  on  top  of  a  Roman  dyke  along  an  ancient  canal 
of  the  Romans  called  the  Foss-way,  where  the  silver 
green  water  lay  charmingly  between  lush  green 
banks  shaded  by  trees  of  a  still  darker  green,  and  here 
and  there  was  to  be  seen  a  green-roofed  house  of 


FOTHERINGAY  AND  THE  FENS  231 

white.  And  we  crossed  the  Trent,  and  it  was  pleas- 
ant to  remember  that  the  river  was  long  ago  given 
its  name  from  the  thirty  {trente)  kinds  of  fish  found 
in  it. 

It  was  a  peaceful,  slow-moving,  warm  and  linger- 
ing afternoon,  and  we  left  the  fens  and  at  length 
swung  into  the  famous  Great  North  Road,  and  a  new 
and  eager  zest  came  upon  all  of  us  with  the  fascina- 
tion of  this  old-time  name.  It  is  a  splendid  road, 
broad  and  level,  with  low  hedges,  and  it  runs  through 
great  stretches  of  cheerful  and  pleasant  country, 
though  by  no  means  so  fine  a  country  as  much  that 
we  have  seen ;  but  we  feel  that  there  must  be  a  happier 
condition  here,  for  the  fairly  well-to-do  homes  seem 
to  prove  it,  than  in  the  richer  regions  of  high- walled 
private  parks  and  very  humble  cottages. 

We  were  hungry,  and  we  drew  up  at  a  huge  inn, 
and  we  went  in  with  pleasant  anticipations  of  sohds 
and  salads,  and,  though  we  did  not  quite  say  it,  it 
seemed  as  if  an  English  inn  such  as  this  on  the  old 
North  Road  ought  to  furnish  forth  the  good  old 
Shakespearean  enumeration  of  "  some  pigeons,  a 
couple  of  short-legged  hens,  a  joint  of  mutton  and 
pretty,  little  tiny  kickshaws."  But  what  was  our 
amazement  to  find  that  there  was  no  food  getable  and 
that  the  dour  proprietor  was  selling  only  drinks! 
But  a  few  miles  farther  we  came  to  an  inn,  the  old 
Bell,  which  was  worthy  of  the  old  road.  How  they 
did  take  care  of  us,  with  comfort  and  fireplaces,  and 
most  excellent  service!  We  found  this  to  be  an 
inn  where  the  English  like  to  stop,  and  no  wonder, 
when  touring  to  or  from  Scotland;  and  a  couple  of 
big  limousines  were  here  with  promiscuous,  fashion- 
able luggage  piled  high  on  the  tops  and  covered  with 
the  big,  loose  tarpaulins  such  as  we  afterwards  came 
to  know  as  typical  of  English  travelers,  for  now  and 
again  on  our  journeyings  we  would  catch  sight  of 


232 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

such  tarpaulins  flapping  in  the  wind  (they  always 
flapped!)  as  some  big  English  car  sped  on. 

A  few  miles  farther  along  the  Great  North  Road 
we  came  to  Scrooby,  a  rambling  little  village  of  little 
houses  of  brick,  with  little  lanes  leading  aimlessly 
here  and  there,  and  on  the  farther  side  of  the  village 
we  motored  away  from  the  road  and  through  a  gate 
and  across  a  grassy  field  and  stopped  at  an  old,  low- 
set  house  of  whitened  brick  which  had  once  been  a 
moated  grange ;  and  even  now  there  is  the  line  of  the 
moat,  and  a  little  stream  within  it,  at  one  end  of  the 
house. 

This  was  the  house  of  that  William  Brewster  who 
is  so  famous  in  Massachusetts  annals,  and  the  walls 
of  the  old  house  are  of  great  thickness.  It  has  been 
considerably  modernized,  but  a  Gothic  window  is  still 
in  place  and  much  of  the  interior  is  unchanged;  and 
it  was  a  matter  for  curious  speculation  that,  on  the 
open  green  pasture  over  which  we  had  just  motored, 
there  once  stood  a  now  completely  vanished  oak- 
timbered  palace,  built  by  Wolsey  when  he  was  Arch- 
bishop of  York. 

Again  we  were  off  on  the  Great  North  Road,  and 
there  came  over  us  more  and  more  a  vague  sense  of 
charm,  with  the  thought  that  everybody  has  been  over 
this  road,  from  kings  to  highwaymen;  or  from  high- 
waymen to  kings,  if  one  should  prefer  to  put  it  that 
way,  for  there  certainly  have  been  some  princely  rob- 
bers and  just  as  certainly  some  robber  princes.  In  a 
way,  we  felt  this  road  to  be  even  more  interesting  than 
ancient  Watling  Street,  and  this  was  probably  be- 
cause the  surroundings  of  this  northern  road  are  still 
so  natural  and  unspoiled. 

Going  on  northward,  we  reached  Doncaster,  pass- 
ing its  empty  racecourse,  and  finding  its  streets  filled 
with  the  usual  Saturday  night  throngs  and  the  music 
of  the  Salvation  Army  band.    We  spent  the  night  at 


FOTHERINGAY  AND  THE  FENS  233 

Doncaster ;  and  realized  that  we  were  on  a  line  prac- 
tically due  east  from  Manchester,  our  starting-point, 
only  some  fifty  miles  away;  and  we  thought  of  the 
great  distances  we  had  traveled  and  the  experiences 
we  had  had  and  the  places  we  had  seen  since  the  be- 
ginning of  our  journey,  that  seemed  so  long  ago. 
But  this  only  made  our  minds  even  more  busily  en- 
gaged with  the  possibilities  that  lay  before  us. 


CHAPTER  XXIII 

THROUGH   THE  NORTH   COUNTRY 

IN  the  morning  we  followed  the  Great  North 
Road  for  some  miles  beyond  Doncaster,  and  then 
left  it,  as  we  turned  to  the  right  in  the  general 
direction  of  York.  And  it  was  interesting  to  see,  on 
our  way  out  of  Doncaster,  a  large  model  mining 
village,  where  the  workmen  are  given  good  homes  to 
live  in,  and  little  gardens,  instead  of  the  ancient  hov- 
els typical  of  the  usual  English  mining  village. 

It  was  a  delightful  Sunday  morning  run  of  less 
than  forty  miles  to  York,  through  an  open  and  highly 
cultivated  country,  without  the  rich  beauty  of  the 
southern  counties,  but  with  clumps  of  elderberry 
giving  color  to  the  hedges  and  with  a  general  bright 
greenery  of  crops  and  growing  hay  and  with  not  in- 
frequently the  sturdy  homes  of  yeomen  adjoining 
their  old  stone  barns;  indeed,  the  distances  average 
more  homes  than  we  have  become  accustomed  to  in 
England.  Now  and  then  we  saw  horses  asleep  in  the 
fields  at  full  length  with  their  heads  down,  some- 
thing we  did  not  remember  ever  having  seen  in  our 
lives  before;  and  it  would  seem  that  the  raising  of 
draught  horses  is  quite  a  picturesque  feature  of  the 
region,  for  we  get  the  impression  of  seeing  at  least 
one  colt  beside  its  mother  at  each  farm. 

We  reached  York  and  motored  through  its  nar- 
row streets  to  the  front  of  its  tremendous  cathedral, 
and  from  the  first  moment  felt  a  profound  sense  of 
its  immensity,  and  the  feeling  increased  as  we  mo- 
tored slowly  along  the  splendid  length  of  side  and 

234 


THE  NORTH  COUNTRY      235 

rounded  the  altar  end  of  the  cathedral  and  came  back 
on  the  other  side,  where  there  is  a  tangle  of  little 
passageways  and  churchly  buildings  and  deans' 
homes  or  whatever  they  may  have  been. 

The  exterior  of  the  cathedral,  magnificently  im- 
pressive though  it  is,  is  not  quite  so  beautiful,  so  far 
as  beauty  alone  is  concerned,  as  that  of  two  or  three 
of  the  other  English  cathedrals,  nor  do  its  surround- 
ings increase  its  beauty  with  exquisite  greenery,  as 
with  Salisbury  and  Wells ;  and  that  the  front  door  is 
permanently  closed  cannot  but  cool  one's  enthusiasm 
a  little;  and  so  does  the  disagreeable  manner  of  the 
custodians  (this  was  the  only  church  or  cathedral 
where  there  was  anything  of  this  manner) ,  who  acted 
as  if  they  wished  the  cathedral  entirely  to  themselves, 
and  who  almost  realized  that  wish  even  when  a  regu- 
lar service  began,  and  who  used  their  most  disagree- 
able manner  in  announcing  that  we  must  walk  to  a 
little  shop  some  distance  away,  on  a  side  street,  and 
deposit  there  every  umbrella,  woman's  purse,  guide- 
book, camera,  in  fact  every  possible  detachable;  not 
that  we  object  to  the  rule,  if  they  really  find  it  neces- 
sary on  account  of  the  suffragettes,  but  only  to  their 
entire  manner,  which  must  necessarily  represent  the 
state  of  mind  of  some  sinecurist  higher  up.  But  even 
this  repellent  atmosphere  does  not  check  or  disturb 
the  feeling  of  positive  awe  and  admiration  with  which 
we  enter  the  interior  and  go  up  and  down  its  tremen- 
dous length  of  aisles. 

In  all,  the  memory  of  York  remains  with  us  as 
that  of  the  finest  and  most  impressive  of  all  the  Eng- 
lish cathedrals;  the  one  which  comes  nearest  to 
the  ideal  of  so  impressing  the  individual  as  to  make 
the  thought  of  the  church  itself  absolutely  supreme; 
and  this  effectiveness  is  much  more  due  to  the  interior 
of  the  building  than  the  exterior;  and  it  is  not  a  mat- 
ter of  beauty  alone,  of  dignity  alone,  of  size  alone, 


236 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

of  impressiveness  alone,  but  the  splendid  combina- 
tion of  all. 

The  view  which  one  longs  to  have  inside  of  the 
cathedral  is  of  the  full,  immense  length  of  it  all,  and 
this  is  checked  by  the  unfortunate  placing  of  the 
organ,  but,  by  going  a  little  to  one  side  at  the  begin- 
ning of  the  nave  of  the  cathedral,  one  may  see  bej^ond 
the  organ  to  the  very  end,  and  thus  obtain  the  effect 
of  the  full  length  of  the  interior,  although  without 
the  full  grandeur  of  the  central  sweep ;  and  the  splen- 
did towering  heights  of  the  interior  are  superb. 

This  cathedral  is  remarkably  rich  in  stained  glass, 
and  the  most  notably  beautiful  window  of  all  is  the 
one  made  up  of  the  five  long  lancets,  some  fifty  feet 
in  height,  known  as  the  Five  Sisters  of  York;  and 
this  window  or  cluster  of  windows  still  retains  its 
original  stained  glass,  hundreds  of  years  old,  as  also 
do  other  of  the  ancient  windows  of  this  wonderful 
cathedral.  We  looked  with  interest  for  the  huge  win- 
dow which  rivals  in  size  the  largest  window  in  Eng- 
land, the  one  that  Ve  saw  in  Gloucester,  and  found 
this  of  York  to  be  a  glory  of  color.  If  antique  Per- 
sian rugs  were  translucent,  the  most  glorious  of  them 
would  express  the  color  of  such  glorious  glass. 

We  remember,  too,  the  wonderful  octagonal 
chapter-house  of  this  cathedral,  marvelously  built, 
and  without  a  central  pillar;  and  when  we  left  the 
cathedral,  after  a  long  stay  in  the  twilight  gloom  of 
its  immensity,  we  went  quietly  out,  for  some  half 
dozen  or  half  score  of  people  were  coming  in  to  attend 
the  regular  afternoon  service,  which  doubtless  would 
be  conducted  by  more  than  that  number  of  clergy. 

An  immense  cathedral,  like  an  immense  castle,  is 
apt  so  to  dwarf  its  surroundings  as  to  make  even  im- 
portant things  of  negligible  interest,  but  there  is  in 
the  city  of  York  quite  a  good  deal  that  is  well  worth 
while.     There  are  rows  of  fascinating,  old  timber 


THE  NORTH  COUNTRY 237 

houses,  and  there  are  ancient  projecting  stories  nod- 
ding over  narrow  ways;  quite  old  enough,  some  of 
these  old  houses,  for  the  time  of  Isaac  of  York  him- 
self; and  there  are  city  walls  and  city  gates  and  even 
a  portcullis.  But,  although  we  look  at  such  things 
with  interest,  the  entire  impression  of  York  is  domi- 
nated, just  as  the  entire  city  is  dominated,  by  the 
cathedral. 

We  left  York  by  a  splendid  road  through  rich 
and  level  country,  and  within  a  few  miles  turned  down 
a  lovers'  lane,  clearly  popular  with  bicycling  couples, 
and  went  past  the  little  station  of  Marston  Moor — 
how  odd  it  seemed  to  have  a  railway  station  of  that 
name! — and  a  mile  farther  stopped  at  an  isolated 
farmhouse  and  inquired  for  the  site  of  the  famous 
fight. 

Whereupon  the  daughter  of  the  house  led  us 
through  a  gate  and  across  several  moorlike  fields  and 
out  into  the  heart  of  the  very  scene,  to  where  the 
relative  positions  of  Cavaliers  and  Roundheads  could 
clearly  be  made  out;  for  over  on  one  side  was  the 
low  ridge,  and  on  the  other  the  little  stream  and  some 
woodland.  It  was  all  so  unchanged  that  the  fight 
might  have  been  yesterday;  and  scarlet  poppies  wxre 
scattered  about  the  field  like  drops  of  blood.  All  was 
a  loneliness  which  was  accented  by  the  darting  of  a 
yellow  fox  to  a  hedge  of  thorn,  in  which  he  disap- 
peared. These  many  hedges,  indeed,  of  blackthorn 
and  hawthorn,  are  the  one  thing  which  mark  a  change 
from  the  days  of  Cromwell,  for  at  the  time  of  the 
battle  they  were  not  there.  There  have  been  efforts 
to  plow  this  dreary  land  and  make  it  into  farms,  but 
the  daughter  told  us  it  was  "  too  hard  on  horseflesh  " 
and  therefore  was  "  laid  down  in  grass." 

It  was  a  hot  day,  and  we  were  all  thirsty,  and  this 
seemed  an  ideal  place  to  drink  well-water,  and  when 
we   returned   to   the    farmhouse   a   jug  of   it    was 


238 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAITsT 

brought,  and  it  was  so  sparkling  and  cold  that  we 
drank  and  drank  again;  something  which  for  pre- 
caution's sake  we  had  not  heretofore  allowed  our- 
selves to  do;  and  when  one  of  us  returned  the  jug, 
with  a  few  words  of  appreciation,  the  well  was 
proudly  shown — and  it  was  in  the  very  drainage 
center  of  a  barnyard! 

Replete  but  repentant,  we  went  on  our  way  toward 
Ripon,  through  a  region  whose  houses  and  country- 
side continued  to  be  of  not  the  most  picturesque  qual- 
ity; this  pointing  out  the  double  fact,  familiar  to 
every  motorist,  that  it  is  delightful  to  motor  through 
a  fascinating  country,  because  every  moment  of  a  long 
day  is  full  of  beauty  and  interest,  but  also  that 
there  is  no  hardship  in  motoring  through  a  less  fas- 
cinating country,  because  there  are  always  the  fine 
air,  the  swift  motion  and  the  constant  sense  of  discov- 
ery, with  the  certainty  that  something  of  much  inter- 
est is  sure  to  be  reached ;  and  even  here,  although  the 
country  was  not  beautiful,  there  was  a  constant  im- 
pression of  agreeable  comfort. 

And  it  was  somewhere  along  this  part  of  the  jour- 
ney that  it  came  to  us,  with  an  amused  wonder  that 
it  had  not  occurred  to  us  a  day  or  so  sooner,  that  one 
strong  reason  why  the  countryside  and  villages  did 
not  seem  so  attractive  was  because  we  had  ceased  to 
see,  in  this  region,  the  dormer-windows  that  farther 
south  added  so  much  to  picturesqueness. 

As  we  neared  Ripon  a  tremendous  lowering  yel- 
low storm  was  approaching,  and  we  felt  the  high 
wind  and  put  on  new  speed  and  were  so  fortunate 
as  to  get  up  the  sharp  ascent  and  into  the  stone- 
flagged  square  of  old  Ripon  and  to  the  shelter  of  the 
inn  just  before  the  storm  broke. 

We  ordered  our  dinner  for  seven,  and  watched  the 
heavy  storm  from  the  windows,  and  soon  it  was 
over,  and  we  walked  down  to  the  cathedral,  an  at- 


THE  NORTH  COUNTRY 239 

tractive  but  not  notable  building,  but  the  best  used 
of  any  cathedral  we  have  seen.  And  we  were  so 
cordially  ushered  down  the  center  aisle  and  placed 
so  directly  under  the  dean's  eye  that  when  we  found 
we  were  in  for  a  lengthy  service,  with  dinner  waiting, 
and  with  quite  a  massing  of  townspeople  behind 
us,  it  was  a  bitter  struggle  between  hunger  and 
appearances ! 

Perhaps  even  more  than  with  any  other  of  the  ex- 
cellent inns  of  our  journey,  does  the  memory  remain 
with  us  of  the  well-ordered  inn  facing  out  on  the 
square  in  Ripon,  for  it  appealed  esthetically  to  every 
sense. 

In  the  center  of  that  square  stands  a  tall  stone 
shaft,  and  facing  it  is  the  town-hall,  bearing  the 
ancient  municipal  motto:  "  Except  ye  Lord  keep  ye 
cittie  ye  Wakeman  waketh  in  vain."  And  the  city 
still  has  its  wakeman!  And  at  nine  o'clock  we  saw 
him  appear  beside  this  stone  shaft,  just  as  the  wake- 
man has  appeared  beside  that  shaft,  or  the  town- 
cross  that  preceded  it,  on  every  night  for  a  thousand 
years,  no  matter  what  the  weather! 

The  wakeman  wore  a  three-cornered  hat  and  a 
long-tailed  coat  with  brass  buttons,  and  on  the  instant 
of  the  first  stroke  of  nine  he  raised  the  great  ox-horn 
to  his  lips  and  blew  a  long-sustained  blast  of  fifty- 
eight  seconds  without  pause  or  waver.  A  second 
blast  came,  and  this  of  fifty-seven  seconds,  and  then 
the  third  and  the  fourth.  He  used  to  hope,  he  says, 
with  a  sort  of  proud  deprecation,  to  blow  it  for  sixty 
seconds,  but  has  regretfully  given  up  the  hope,  as  he 
is  getting  older,  as  he  says,  instead  of  younger.  He 
has  been  the  wakeman  for  ten  and  a  half  years  and 
receives  twelve  pounds  a  year  for  his  nightly  service, 
but,  as  he  puts  it,  with  a  suggestion  of  grievance  in  his 
voice,  he  must  walk  without  pay  in  every  civic 
procession ! 


240 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

The  custom  originated  with  the  setting  of  the 
watch,  and  it  has  not  lost  its  interest  for  the  townsfolk 
themselves,  for  some  of  them  gather  to  listen  and 
watch  and  time  him.  The  ancient  custom  is  taken  seri- 
ously, but  with  not  too  much  of  seriousness,  and  it 
is  delightful  to  find  a  custom  so  extremely  ancient 
kept  up  in  such  a  simple  and  matter-of-fact  way. 

Ripon,  though  it  holds  to  the  ancient,  is  full  of  fine 
modern  ideas,  for  the  municipality  has  acquired  well- 
equipped  sulphur  baths  and  spa  waters  and  its  own 
water  system,  so  as  to  attract  strangers  and  perma- 
nent residents  here  as  a  health  resort;  and  in  all  it 
seems  an  admirable  city. 

And  it  is  noticeable  in  Ripon,  as  in  other  cities  of 
England,  what  an  amazing  development  of  trusts  has 
come  about,  for  there  are  four  separate  banks  here, 
which  are  branches  of  four  London  institutions  that 
have  similar  branches  scattered  in  dozens  or  scores  of 
towns  throughout  the  country;  and  the  chemist  shop 
is  one  of  a  line,  under  a  central  management,  which 
also  scatters  its  branches  throughout  England. 

We  had  come  to  Ripon  because  of  Fountains  Ab- 
bey, some  three  miles  away,  and  it  is  the  most  beau- 
tiful ecclesiastic  ruin  in  Great  Britain.  The  abbey 
is  in  the  center  of  a  great  private  park,  which  is  en- 
tered through  immense  park  gates  and  thence  past 
cattle  and  deer  scattered  pictorially  among  the  gentle 
glades.  Before  long  we  came  to  an  inner  park  gate, 
and  there  the  car  had  to  be  left,  and  we  walked  on 
along  a  path  with  a  great  hedge  of  trimmed  yew, 
fifteen  feet  high,  on  one  side,  and  on  the  opposite 
side  sloping  banks  that  were  solid  with  rhododen- 
drons, but  not  in  blossom ;  and  we  came  to  an  opening 
in  the  hedge,  and  there  was  suddenly  a  splendid  effect 
of  water,  with  a  bank  rising  abruptly  behind  it,  and 
with  trees  and  an  octagon  tower  at  the  top;  it  was 
water  set  in  a  close-clipped  lawn,  and  there  were 


THE  NORTH  COUNTRY 241 

circles  and  rectangles  in  water  and  grass,  and  the  wa- 
ter was  on  the  very  level  of  the  grass.  A  little 
farther  and  there  was  an  even  more  beautiful  view, 
with  a  little  pillared  classic  temple,  soft  yellow  in 
color  amid  the  soft  green;  there  were  waterfalls  and 
exquisitely  disposed  statuary,  and  overhanging  trees, 
and  in  every  direction  entrancing  vistas  and  views. 

And  all  this  was  but  an  introduction  to  the  abbey. 
All  these  were  the  private  grounds  of  the  Marquis  of 
Ripon,  who  owns  everything  hereabouts,  including 
the  ruins.  It  was  the  perfection  of  landscape  gar- 
dening, and  of  gaining  amazing  results  by  simple 
means. 

We  climbed  a  hill,  and  we  walked  on  under  oaks, 
copper  beeches,  yews,  elms,  spruce  trees  two  hundred 
years  old  and  oaks  vastly  older,  and  came  at  length 
to  where,  from  a  low  cliff,  there  opened  a  \asta  of 
sheer  loveliness;  an  extraordinary  view  of  the  great 
romantic  ruin,  set  in  the  distance  on  a  lawn  beside  a 
running  stream,  with  trees  massed  solidly  behind, 
with  banks  rising  green  on  either  side,  and  in  front 
the  long-reaching,  level  greensward  hemmed  in  by 
trees  and  flowers  and  the  green-clad  banks. 

We  descended  from  the  hill,  and  approached  the 
ruins  by  a  level  walk  beside  the  stream,  and  there 
was  vast  pleasure  in  walking  through  one  after  an- 
other of  what  were  once  huge  monastic  buildings. 
The  great  Norman  nave  of  the  abbey  still  stands, 
majestic  though  roofless;  the  great  main  tower  is  still 
there  and  the  central  arch,  and  there  are  ruined  win- 
dows; there  is  a  marvelous  cryptlike  series  of  subter- 
ranean chambers,  of  great  extent  and  with  groined 
roofs;  and  we  find  that  the  stream  itself  still  runs  in 
conduits,  beneath  some  of  the  ruined  buildings  that 
still  remain.  In  all,  we  found  it  a  place  of  wonder- 
ful beauty  and  interest. 

The  return,  by  another  path,  was  almost  as  lovely 


242 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

as  the  approach,  and  at  a  final  turn  we  looked  back 
for  a  last  and  long  look  at  this  beautiful  gray  ghost 
of  a  vanished  time. 

It  added  keenly  to  the  pleasure  of  Fountains  Ab- 
bey that  we  had  it  all  to  ourselves,  though  others  were 
coming  in  as  we  left ;  and  that  after  the  long  walk  we 
were  at  liberty  to  sit  down  at  the  park  gates,  in  a 
stone-balustraded  garden,  beside  the  stream  which 
had  rippled  down  with  us  from  the  ruins  we  had  just 
left,  and  enjoy  a  delightful  tea,  served  from  the  gate- 
keeper's house. 

On  leaving  Ripon  and  going  on  northward,  there 
shortly  came  a  striking  example  of  how,  at  any  mo- 
ment, in  motoring  through  England,  one  may  hap- 
pen upon  some  fascinating  memento  of  the  past ;  and 
that  one  never  knows  whether  it  is  to  be  of  a  century 
or  ten  centuries  ago  does  add  so  much  to  the  fascina- 
tion— for  as  we  go  on,  along  the  road  which  leads 
us  through  Northallerton,  through  a  fresh  open  coun- 
try and  between  fields  of  very  sweet-smelling  white 
clover,  and  with  great  wide  hilly  horizons  to  the 
northwest,  we  notice  by  the  roadside  a  plain  stone 
obelisk  and,  stopping  the  car  to  see  what  it  means, 
we  see  that  it  marks  where  the  Battle  of  the  Standard 
was  fought  in  1138.  Well,  Stephen  was  king  then, 
and  on  this  very  spot  a  Scotch  king  was  taken  pris- 
oner— how  strange  it  is  to  try  to  visualize  it  all,  and 
how  it  seems  at  the  same  time  so  very  far  away  and 
yet  so  very,  very  near! 

Again  we  are  on  for  the  northward,  and  we  are 
aiming  for  Durham,  and  miles  before  we  reach  it  we 
see  a  distant,  square  and  shadowy  block  of  stone 
through  a  cleft  in  the  hills  and  we  wonder  if  that  can 
be  Durham  Cathedral,  and  we  almost  decide  that  it 
cannot  be,  but  we  are  later  to  find  that  it  is. 

A  few  miles  before  getting  into  Durham  we  de- 
toured  to  the  right  and  followed  one  devious  turn 


THE  NORTH  COUNTRY 243 

after  another,  and  passed  through  several  very  black 
and  ill-built  colliery  towns  and  a  desperately  bare 
and  uninteresting  neighborhood;  an  overworked  and 
underfed  sort  of  neighborhood.  We  were  looking 
for  the  birthplace  of  Mrs.  Browning,  which  we  natu- 
rally supposed  would  be  known  in  its  very  vicinity. 
We  understood  it  was  at  Coxhoe,  but  neither  post- 
masters, schoolteachers,  letter-carriers,  nor  vicar's 
daughter  nearby  had  ever  heard  of  Mrs.  Browning  in 
connection  with  that  neighborhood.  We  knew  that 
for  some  unexplained  reason  there  had  always  been 
great  mystery  thrown  about  the  birthplace  of  Mrs. 
Browning  and  that  the  highest  English  books  of  ref- 
erence have  differed  as  to  what  ought  to  be  such  a 
very  simple  matter;  but  it  was  astonishing  to  find 
that  the  vagueness  persisted  to  the  very  doors  of  the 
house.  The  delightful  vicar's  daughter  was  increas- 
ingly concerned  and  interested;  "Was  Mrs.  Brown- 
ing really  born  near  here? " — ^and  she  warned  us,  as 
we  went  on,  that  the  road  was  very  dangerous; 
"  There  are  children  in  the  roads,"  she  added, 
explanatorily. 

A  little  girl  of  twelve  finally  directed  us  to  what, 
when  we  came  to  the  house,  we  found  to  be  the  right 
place.  Out  of  a  dull  colliery  street  we  entered,  by 
lodge  gates,  along  a  poetic  and  leafy  drive  and  past 
a  fine  machicolated  garden-wall  and  found  the  house, 
Coxhoe  Hall,  to  be  quite  large,  good-looking  and 
homelike,  with  exquisite  lawn  and  great  stone  dove- 
cote and  huge  stables  behind. 

It  was  but  a  short  distance  from  here  to  ancient 
Durham,  and  we  wound  up  an  abrupt  hill,  through 
the  town,  to  a  great  open  space  beside  the  cathedral. 
And  it  is  a  cathedral  of  stem  stupendousness. 

The  towered  front  of  the  cathedral  is  on  a  cliff 
overlooking  the  river,  so  we  first  see  the  side  of  the 
building,  and  we  see  it  in  all  its  great  and  unbroken 


244 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

and  impressive  length.  And  what  first  and  last  and 
most  forcibly  impressed  us  about  the  cathedral  was 
its  bleak  grandeur;  it  is  a  fit  cathedral  for  this  bleak 
northern  England;  it  gives  the  impression  of  great, 
bare  strength ;  and  one  remembers  that  the  bishops  of 
Durham  were  in  the  old  days  fighting  bishops  and 
held  their  hill  half  for  the  glory  of  God  and  half  in 
defense  against  the  Scotch. 

And  the  cathedral  has  age,  for  much  of  it  was  built 
as  far  back  as  in  the  ten  hundreds.  Inside  and  out 
it  is  rugged,  bleak,  powerful,  with  far  less  of  carving 
and  ornament  than  many  another  cathedral,  but  with 
huge  Norman  arches  and  enormous  pillars  and  stately 
and  almost  unbroken  length  of  interior.  It  is  a 
gloomy  cathedral,  or  at  least  so  dark  and  stern  as 
almost  to  be  gloomy,  and  yet  it  is  at  the  same  time 
of  a  grave  restfulness. 

We  went  to  this  cathedral  before  dinner,  and  after 
dinner,  and  twice  in  the  following  forenoon,  for  it 
continually  drew  us.  At  first  the  feeling  was  that  it 
should  be  deemed  the  most  adequate  and  impressive 
of  all  the  English  cathedrals;  and  yet,  while  not  in 
any  degree  losing  our  sense  of  its  almost  overpower- 
ing grandeur,  we  did  come  to  realize  its  lack  of  in- 
terior height  as  a  drawback,  and  from  the  first  we 
knew  that  the  geometrical  cuttings  on  some  of  the 
huge  pillars  were  a  blunder  of  centuries  ago  never 
to  be  remedied.  But,  although  it  may  after  all  be 
second  to  York  in  complete  impressiveness  and 
beauty,  it  stands  at  the  head  of  all  in  grandeur  of 
effect  and  fit  surroundings. 

The  most  noble  view  is  from  across  the  river,  for 
thus  it  is  seen  splendidly  rising  above  the  water  and 
above  the  trees.  Much  of  the  space  beside  the  cathe- 
dral is  rough-grassed,  and  boys  decorously  play  there, 
as  boys  have  played  there  for  centuries,  for  this  space 
and  this  privilege  were  granted  as  a  right  to  the  chil- 


THE  NORTH  COUNTRY 245 

dren  of  the  town  many,  many  centuries  ago.  And  to 
realize  all  this  gives  one  a  pleasant  glow. 

Another  ancient  right  is  still  definitely  remem- 
bered, for  there  is  a  huge  bronze  knocker  on  the  main 
door  of  the  cathedral,  a  glorious  specimen  of  twelfth- 
century  metal  work,  and  to  those  who  in  the  old  days 
came  and  swung  this  great  knocker,  sanctuary  was 
given  at  any  hour  of  the  day  or  night. 

Nowhere  does  there  come  a  deeper  impressiveness 
than  with  the  falling  of  the  dusk  inside  of  this  huge 
old  pile,  and  the  ghostly  sense  of  it  all  becomes  the 
deeper  when  one  remembers  that  great  numbers  of 
Scotch  prisoners,  penned  here  by  Cromwell,  died  piti- 
fully within  these  very  walls. 

We  found  that  all  of  Durham,  whether  in  the  cathe- 
dral, the  castle  or  the  town,  make  strangers  welcome 
with  a  pleasant  courtesy  and  an  unwearied  desire  to 
show  whatever  is  of  interest;  for  they  love  the  place 
themselves  and  desire  that  all  should  come  to  love  it. 

The  castle  is  likely  to  be  overlooked,  for  it  is  now 
used  for  college  purposes,  and  we  even  dreaded  to  go 
inside  of  its  ancient  walls  from  fear  of  disillusion- 
ment. But  we  did  go  in,  through  its  beautiful  Nor- 
man arched  gateway,  and  were  amply  repaid.  The 
ancient  castle  teems  with  the  present-day  life  of  pro- 
fessors and  students,  in  a  comfortable  and  busy  way, 
and  you  see  servants  flitting  about  and  you  find  de- 
lightfully cozy  nooks  and  are  shown  the  fascinating, 
ancient  castle  kitchen,  huge  fireplaced,  still  used  for 
the  cooking  of  to-day,  and  you  feel  the  wonder  of  the 
tiny  old  Norman  castle  chapel  and  the  dignity  of 
tapestry-hung  old  corridors  and  of  the  great  halls. 

We  were  s^hown  about  by  a  capable  maid  as  guide, 
and  then  one  of  the  professors  himself  went  about 
with  us.  He  was  pleased  that  we  hugely  admired  a 
magnificent  old  staircase  of  the  blackest  of  black  oak ; 
"  But  it  is  not  black  with  age,"  he  said,  sadly;  "  old 


246 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

oak  ought  never  to  be  black.  Blackness  comes  only 
from  the  vandalism  of  linseed  oil,  and  time  ought  to 
give  to  oak  only  a  silvery  gray ;  "  and  he  led  us  to  an 
ancient  carved  choir-stall  to  show  this  color.  "  Noth- 
ing wrong  has  ever  touched  this,"  he  exclaimed,  and 
he  ascetically  and  esthetically  shuddered  when  asked 
what  he  thought  of  the  warm  brown  tones  of  old  oak 
such  as  at  Knole  House:  "Ah!  That  has  been 
waxed!  "  It  was  delightful  thus  to  get  the  viewpoint 
of  such  a  man  as  to  old  oak  of  the  warm  browns  and 
blacks  that  everybody  loves. 


CHAPTER  XXIV 

NORTHUMBERLAND  AND  THE  ROMAN  WALL 

WE  aim  from  Durham  into  a  rarely  visited 
England,  for  we  are  aiming  for  what  looms 
vaguely  but  almost  mythically  in  the  imagi- 
nation, the  Roman  Wall.  We  follow  what  seem  al- 
most random  roads  and  swing  through  Witton  Gil- 
bert and  mount  among  rising  sweeps,  with  little  col- 
lieries with  their  lofty  wheels  over  the  pit  mouths,  and 
black  little  villages,  now  near  at  hand  and  now  show- 
ing in  the  distance;  a  region  without  flowers,  this 
seems  to  be;  with  sweeping  views  of  bareness  and  a 
splendid  sweeping  wind,  and  we  reach  an  attractive 
region  with  meadows  and  rich  fields,  but  still  with 
only  a  few  flowers  and  but  a  scattering  of  trees,  and 
here  and  there  again  in  the  distance  are  the  great 
black  heaps  and  high-hung  wheels  that  mean  pros- 
perity and  poverty;  all  this  being  a  region  which 
literally  sends  its  coals  to  Newcastle.  We  mount 
higher  and  higher  and  pass  through  the  dull  street 
of  a  town  of  discomfort  called  Black  Hill  and  notice 
a  pawnshop  with  its  doorway  fairly  greasy  with  mis- 
ery and  use,  and  from  here  go  down  a  long  hill  and 
across  the  Derwent — ^how  one  is  always  coming  upon 
these  long-known  names  as  real ! — at  Shotley  Bridge, 
by  a  romantically  placed  old  stone  bridge,  and  go  on, 
again  mounting  into  great,  high,  bare  rolling  coun- 
try, with  ever  a  cold  wind  coming  full  and  free  and 
now  and  then  a  dash  of  wind-driven  rain. 

And  we  pass  through  a  region  with  trees  once  more 
about  us,   and   suddenly  there   opens  before  us   a 

247 


248 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAUST 

spreading  view  of  broadly  open  country,  and  we 
breathe  deep  with  the  sheer  joy  of  it  all  and  we  know 
that  we  are  looking  across  into  Northumberland  and 
there  is  magic  in  the  name. 

And  we  swing  down  a  long  close-wooded  road  into 
Riding  Mill,  a  little  stone-house  Tyneside  village  in 
reds  and  grays  and  yellows  massed  among  trees  and 
shrubs  and  flowers,  and  there  the  Tyne  flows  between 
steepish  banks  and  we  follow  up  the  stream  to  Hex- 
ham, where  North  Tyne  and  South  Tyne  and  Tyne 
make  literally  a  three-tined  fork. 

From  this  bright,  animated,  clean,  ancient  but  not 
very  ancient-looking  market-town  we  crossed  on  a 
long,  old  stone  bridge,  abruptly  descended  to  from 
the  town,  and  ran  beside  the  North  Tyne  a  half-dozen 
miles  to  Chollerford,  where  there  are  the  remains  of 
a  great  Roman  camp  and  where  a  wonderful  amount 
of  Roman  weapons,  ornaments  and  utensils  have  been 
excavated  and  preserved.  And,  with  walls  and 
guard-houses  and  forum  whose  lines  are  still  pre- 
served, we  noticed,  in  a  bit  of  Roman  cement  floor, 
the  print  of  a  dog's  paw,  and  it  pointed  out  the  ironies 
possible  to  Time  and  Fame,  that  there  could  thus  be 
stamped  for  eternity  the  casual  footstep  of  a  careless 
dog  who  put  his  paw  heedlessly  down  upon  the  Ro- 
man workman's  cement  while  it  was  still  wet — ^a.d. 
125  or  so! 

This  camp  was  a  great  station  on  the  old  Roman 
Wall,  but  here  the  wall  itself  has  disappeared.  One 
comes  to  wonder,  later,  that  any  of  the  wall  remains 
anywhere,  for  its  block-stones  have  been  used  for  all 
these  centuries  as  a  supply  for  the  building  of  roads, 
castles,  churches,  walls  and  homes. 

We  turn  to  the  westward  along  what  is  known  as 
General  Wade's  Road,  and  go  mounting  up  and  up 
through  an  immense  loneliness  and  with  a  sense  as  if 
getting  to  the  top  of  the  world,  and  at  length  we  come 


NORTHUMBERLAND 249 

upon  a  long  section  of  the  ancient  wall.  And  there 
could  not  be  a  more  imposing  place  to  discover  such 
a  relic  of  the  tremendous  past,  for  there  is  a  marvelous 
and  solitary  view  for  miles  and  miles  in  every  direc- 
tion from  this  height  to  which  the  road  has  mounted 
with  us. 

There  are  really  two  walls  and  two  great  ditches 
running  parallel  with  each  other  entirely  across 
the  country;  and  antiquarians  are  still  vainly  disput- 
ing about  them.  The  principal  wall,  which  ran  orig- 
inally clear  across  Great  Britain,  between  where  are 
now  Newcastle  on  the  east  and  Carlisle  on  the  west, 
apparently  following  a  bee-line  and  alternately  dip- 
ping through  valleys  and  clambering  over  heights, 
still  stands,  to  a  considerable  degree  intact,  for  a  long 
distance  here  where  we  found  it,  and  it  is  masonry, 
now  five  feet  high,  of  squared-stone  blocks.  It  is 
positively  tremendous  in  its  effect,  here  on  these 
lonely  hills,  and  we  felt  as  if,  had  the  motor  tour  done 
nothing  more  than  lead  us  to  such  marvelous  impres- 
siveness  as  this,  it  would  for  that  alone  have  been 
thoroughly  worth  while. 

This  great  wall,  built  to  hold  back  the  Scotch,  was 
probably  made  by  that  wonderful  Emperor  Hadrian, 
whose  tomb  and  villa  are  still  among  the  glories  of 
Italy ;  and  it  adds  startlingly  to  this  scene  of  supreme 
loneliness  to  know  that,  so  it  has  been  estimated,  there 
were  here,  in  the  time  of  the  Romans,  fully  one  hun- 
dred thousand  people,  officers,  soldiers,  wives,  camp 
followers  and  furnishers  of  supplies,  living  along  the 
line  of  this  wall;  and  ancient  records  show  that  the 
legions  in  that  empire-building  time  of  Rome  were 
not  all  from  Italy,  but  that  at  least  some  were  Span- 
iards and  Belgians. 

We  had  rather  expected  to  run  from  here  to  New- 
castle and  thence  up  the  coast,  but  it  occurred  to  us 
that  it  ought  to  be  very  much  more  interesting  and 


250  TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

beautiful  to  go  diagonally  to  the  northward  and  thus 
explore  some  scarcely  traveled  Northumberland 
roads;  and  we  did  this  and  were  delighted  that  we 
did,  for  it  led  us  through  a  sweet  and  romantic  coun- 
try, not  in  the  least  bleak,  as  we  had  expected,  and 
yet  with  but  very  few  houses  in  this  entire  cross- 
country region,  and  with  not  only  a  sweet  wildness 
of  roadside  growth  and  yellowing  gorse,  but  with  late- 
blossoming  laburnums  near  the  few  homes.  And  now 
and  then  to  the  northward  there  were  charming 
glimpses  of  the  deep,  dark-blue  Cheviots. 

We  came  to  the  North  Sea,  spreading  before  us,  a 
great  sweep  of  water,  in  the  cool  evening  light,  and 
we  followed  a  splendid  coastwise  road,  and  stopped 
at  Alnwick,  after  a  delightful  run  for  the  day  of 
eighty-seven  miles  and  a  total  for  the  tour  thus  far  of 
sixteen  hundred  and  eighty-four. 

At  Alnwick  is  a  castle,  built  on  a  princely  vastness 
of  scale ;  but  the  w^arders  on  these  turrets  high  are  not 
moving  athwart  the  evening  sky,  for  these  are  but 
stone  figures  giving  a  factitious  effect  of  watchful- 
ness! We  walked  out  in  the  evening,  through  the 
desolate-seeming,  duke-owned  town;  indeed,  this 
great  county  of  Northumberland  is  divided  among 
fewer  proportionate  owners  than  is  any  other  county 
in  England,  and  some  of  the  individual  holdings  are 
of  immensity;  we  walked  out,  and  it  was  half -past 
nine  when  we  left  the  hotel,  and  the  long  and  linger- 
ing twilight  was  so  tempting  that  we  went  on  across 
the  river,  passing  a  parapet-poised  lion  with  a  funny, 
straight  tail — the  Percy  Lion — ^and  we  wandered  on 
through  the  meadows,  looking  across  at  the  great 
castle  and  gaining  thus  an  excellent  idea  of  its  vast 
extent. 

The  claim  is  that  it  is  the  largest  building  in 
the  world  owned  by  a  sub.iect;  and  back  in  the  vil- 
lage they  tell  us  that  the  Duke  of  Northumberland 


NORTHUMBERLAND 251 

owns  towns,  villages,  farms,  waste-land  and  every- 
thing within  a  radius  of  forty  miles,  besides  having 
exclusive  rights  in  coastwise  fishery! 

Next  morning  we  were  shown  about  through  much 
of  the  huge  pile,  and  it  was  curious  to  realize  that  one 
Scotch  king  was  killed  in  besieging  this  castle  and 
that  another  was  taken  prisoner  here;  but  it  was  of 
very  much  more  interest  to  us  to  see  mementos  of  a 
battle  many  hundreds  of  years  more  recent  and  hun- 
dreds of  times  more  important  to  us,  for  we  discov- 
ered that  Bunker  Hill  guns  and  shot  are  preserved 
here,  with  other  mementos  of  that  Lord  Percy,  son 
of  the  house  and  afterwards  Duke  of  Northumber- 
land, who  figured  not  only  at  Bunker  Hill  but  at 
Lexington,  where  he  brought  up  help  for  the  re- 
treating British;  a  fact  commemorated,  as  we  remem- 
bered, by  a  stone  cannon  set  beside  the  Boston  and 
Lexington  Road.  It  gave  a  sense  of  surprise,  too, 
to  realize  what  must  have  been  the  importance  of  our 
war  to  the  British  themselves,  and  what  it  must  have 
meant  to  them  to  have  the  heir  of  the  best  part  of  a 
county  walk  up  Bunker  Hill  against  the  rifles  of  our 
shirt-sleeved  farmers.. 

Alnwick  Castle,  though  huge,  is  restored  out  of 
old-time  atmosphere,  and  its  barbicans  and  towers 
fail  to  stir  one;  there  is  really  more  atmosphere  in  a 
remaining  drear  city  gate,  and  very  much  more  in  a 
plot  of  land  near  the  town  that  is  still  used  as  a  com- 
mon because  King  John,  seven  hundred  years  ago, 
gave  it  to  the  townsfolk  as  a  reward  for  their  aid  in 
extricating  him  from  a  bog  into  which  his  horse  had 
stumbled. 

From  Alnwick  we  had  a  fine  coastwise  run  of  thirty 
miles,  against  a  finely  exhilarating  sea  breeze,  vrith 
the  sea  for  much  of  the  time  in  sight,  and  we  saw  in 
the  distance  Holy  Island,  and  had  a  distant  sight  of 
the  great  expanse  of  over-restored  Bamburgh  Castle, 


252 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

and  thus  on  to  the  Tweed  and  over  the  bridge  into 
rock-perched  Berwick. 

On  account  of  its  reputation  and  its  Border- 
guarding  fame,  we  motored  up  and  down  consider- 
ably through  the  dark-stone  streets  of  Berwick,  but 
found  it  rather  a  rough-seeming  place,  and  disap- 
pointing as  to  interest;  and  we  returned  over  the 
bridge  and  followed  up  the  valley  of  the  Tweed,  a 
river  whose  very  name  brings  up  fascinating  sugges- 
tions of  romance  and  history. 

And  history  and  romance  soon  appear  following 
the  suggestions,  for  we  follow  the  picturesque  river 
road  for  only  a  few  miles  before  we  turn  in  through 
a  narrow,  leafy  lane  and  are  facing  the  great  ruin  of 
the  great  castle  of  Norham,  a  castle  memorable  in 
itself  and  even  more  memorable  through  the  superb 
opening  lines  of  "  Marmion." 

The  ruin  is  now  not  much  more  than  a  shell;  and 
we  went  about  it  with  deep  interest,  and  then  had  tea 
served  romantically  in  its  very  shadow  by  the  wife  of 
the  caretaker,  whose  home  is  a  snuggery  in  the  outer 
wall  of  the  castle. 

From  here  we  went  through  nearby  Norham  vil- 
lage, which  lies  on  the  level  of  the  Tweed,  and  thence 
on  through  thick-wooded  country,  and  crossed  the 
sinister  Till  by  Twizel  Bridge,  the  same  arching  and 
ancient  stone  bridge  over  which  the  English  troops 
marched  to  the  field  of  Flodden. 

And  thence  up  the  delightful  and  romantic  Till 
valley  we  went,  and  turned  finally  into  the  still  tiny 
village  of  Branxton  Moor,  at  the  very  edge  of  which 
the  famous  battle  of  Flodden  was  fought.  There  are 
still  ancient,  little,  flower-bowered,  thatched-roofed 
cottages  in  this  village  which  were  here  at  the  time  of 
the  battle,  and  the  queer,  desolate-looking  old  church 
is  here;  really  the  same  church,  though  changed  some- 
what, of  Flodden  time;  and  many  of  the  slain  were 


JsTORTHUMBERLAND 253 

buried  close  about,  and  ditches  full  of  skulls  and  bones 
are  still  at  times  come  upon.  "  An'  some  visitors 
wanted  to  gi  me  a  poond  for  a  skull,"  said  an  old 
countryman;  but  he  would  not  sell.  "  For  it  wad  no 
be  decent,"  he  said,  with  much  of  rustic  dignity,  "  to 
sell  the  skull  o'  a  man  that  fowt  for  his  country." 
Then,  after  a  pause:  "  But  I  wadna  say  they  didna 
get  some  teeth,"  he  added,  cannily  and  slyly. 

The  Battle  of  Flodden,  fought  in  1513,  is  remem- 
bered in  Scotland  as  vividly  as  if  it  were  fought  last 
year.  It  is  still  looked  upon  as  a  national  disaster, 
and  we  had  not  long  before  read  in  a  newspaper  that, 
in  a  recent  address  at  Selkirk,  Lord  Rosebery  had 
said  that  every  man,  woman  and  child  in  Scotland 
knows  every  detail  of  Flodden;  and  an  uncle  of  a 
Scotch  friend  of  ours,  an  old  man  who  died  only  last 
year,  always  hoisted  his  flag  at  half-mast  on  that 
day. 

The  main  portion  of  the  battlefield  is  a  long  slope 
that  is  now  a  series  of  grainfields  leading  up  to  a 
tree-sprinkled  hill ;  and  where  the  fiercest  of  the  bat- 
tle finally  centered,  where  the  English  steel-clad 
horsemen  charged  and  charged  again  where  still  the 
"  Scots,  around  their  king,  unbroken,  fought  in  des- 
perate ring,"  is  where  the  battlefield  narrows  between 
the  main  hillside  and  a  knoll  that  is  now  covered  with 
grain,  and  on  the  summit  of  which  has  been  placed  a 
huge  stone  cross  with  the  noble  inscription,  "  To  the 
Brave  of  Both  Nations."  The  battlefield  is  in  the 
midst  of  a  wide-stretching  scene  of  beauty,  and  the 
region,  almost  solitary  save  for  the  tiny  old  village, 
has  no  more  inhabitants  than  it  had  four  hundred 
years  ago. 

We  drove  about  in  this  now  so  quiet  country  to 
ruined  Etal,  and  to  ancient  Ford  Castle  in  its  flower- 
ing gardens,  a  castle  now  much  modernized,  but  still 
preserving  the  very  bedroom  in  which  the  Scottish 


254 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

king  slept  before  the  battle;  and  we  left  the  battle 
vicinity  by  way  of  Coldstream,  on  the  Tweed,  a  town 
which  gave  name  to  Guards  more  famous  than  its  own 
quiet  self;  and  we  noticed  in  Coldstream  a  police 
placard  that  would  seem  incredible  if  we  had  not  be- 
come accustomed  to  the  long  British  twilights,  for  it 
read,  "  Motor  lamps  must  be  lit  to-night  at  9.44  " ! 
And  what  an  exactness,  too! 

Thence  we  went  to  a  place  whose  name  had  long 
fascinated  us,  but  which  is  quite  away  from  anything 
but  motor  approach.  Kirk  Yetholm.  For  this  Httle 
village  was  long  the  headquarters  of  the  gypsies  of 
Great  Britain  and  they  kept  up  a  sort  of  central 
authority,  and  here  was  their  ruler's  home. 

The  village  lies  bleakly  against  a  line  of  bleak- 
rising  hills,  and,  though  a  poor  little  place,  gives  a 
powerful  sense  of  isolation  and  aloofness.  There  are 
dark-eyed  descendants  of  the  gypsies  still  living  here, 
though  they  no  longer  have  a  king  or  ruler  of  their 
own  or  an  organization;  and  the  place  gives  us,  in 
leaving,  a  certain  sense  of  sorrowful  and  romantic 
dignity,  sitting  up  there  bare  and  lonely,  against 
those  bare  and  lonely  hills. 

From  Kirk  Yetholm  we  had  a  short  run  of  a  few 
miles,  over  roads  that  were  richly  picturesque,  to 
ancient  Kelso,  with  its  ruined  abbey  set  right  upon 
a  main  and  busy  thoroughfare,  like  a  town  posses- 
sion to  be  enjoyed  in  its  ruined  beauty  every  day;  and 
we  drove  out  to  nearby  Floors  Castle,  the  seat  of  the 
Duke  of  Roxburgh,  a  huge,  modern-looking,  over- 
grown-looking structure  set  in  a  marvelous  park  of 
wonderfully  magnificent  beeches  which  is  inclosed  by 
miles  of  the  mightiest  and  most  forbidding  stone  park 
wall  that  we  have  seen;  and  on  a  little  knoll  rising 
from  a  river  meadow  within  the  park  of  Floors  we 
saw  the  fragmentary  but  finely-set  ruins  of  ancient 
Roxburgh  Castle;  and  from  Kelso  we  followed  along 


NORTHUMBERLAND 255 

the  Tweed,  in  the  cool  of  the  evening,  through  a  fas- 
cinating country  as  thick  with  greenery  as  if  it  were 
in  southern  England,  with  now  and  then  a  shimmer- 
ing glimpse  of  the  beauty  of  the  river,  and  views  of 
the  towering  Eildons,  triple  landmarks  of  distinction, 
and  thus  by  sweeps  and  bends  of  beauty  came  to  that 
place  whose  very  name  suggests  romance  illimitable 
— ^Melrose, 


CHAPTER  XXV 

MELROSE  TO   TANTALLON 

TO  those  who  come  to  know  and  to  love  Mel- 
rose— ^and  the  words  are  synonymous — ^no 
words  of  appreciation  can  seem  too  high.  For 
Melrose  is  so  charming  in  itself  and  so  delightfully 
stands  for  the  best  of  Scotland  and  of  Sir  Walter 
Scott.  The  glamor  thrown  over  the  entire  vicinity 
by  the  loving  enthusiasm  of  Scott  has,  naturally,  very 
much  to  do  with  it;  but  the  important  thing  is  that 
the  enthusiasm  is  justified  and  that  the  visitor  from 
across  the  sea  comes  so  readily  to  regard  the  neigh- 
borhood with  affection. 

Nor  is  it  that  there  is  any  stupendous  ruin  here, 
any  mighty  cathedral  or  superb  palace,  or  that  here 
was  the  making  of  mighty  history.  A  long  since  for- 
gotten skirmish  was  the  nearest  approach  to  a  battle, 
and  the  nearest  approach  to  a  palace  is  Abbotsford, 
and  the  nearest  approach  to  a  mighty  cathedral  or  a 
stupendous  ruin  is  the  small,  sweet  ruin  of  Melrose 
Abbey.  But  all  the  vicinity  of  Melrose  is  full  of  a 
most  attractive  restfulness  and  of  a  charm  that  is  half 
suggestion. 

And  the  abbey  is  itself  a  delight,  set  aside  as  it  is 
from  the  very  center  of  the  town,  in  its  beauty  of  soft, 
yellowish  gray.  Much  of  the  loving  detail  of  the 
long-ago  builders  is  still  preserved,  and  there  is  about 
the  building  a  fine  air  of  seclusion  as  it  stands  there 
in  the  midst  of  its  time-stained  gravestones.  At  the 
other  end  of  the  town  is  an  admirable  peel-tower,  al- 
most the  only  habitable  example  remaining  in  Scot- 

256 


i^i^^l^is^^^mfs's^^^^i^^^ 


Beside  the  axcient  Roman  Wall 


The  town-gate  of  dismal  Alnwick 


The  sweepixg  stretch  of  Flodden  Field 


The    stone    guardsmek   ox    Aln- 
wick Castle  walls 


The  Till  by  Twizel  Bridge 


Kirk  Yetholm,  the  mountain  village  of  the  old-time  gypsies 


MELROSE  TO  TANTALLON 257 

land  of  the  fortified  dwelling-house  of  a  few  hundred 
years  ago  as  distinguished  from  a  castle. 

Melrose  itself  is  an  attractive  town,  a  mellow  town, 
a  town  of  amenities,  a  town  that  makes  felicitous  use 
of  its  riverside.  We  stayed  at  a  delightful  hotel  a 
mile  from  the  center  of  the  place,  with  spacious 
grounds  running  down  to  the  Tweed,  and  we  spent 
our  stay  of  three  days  in  strolls  and  motor-drives ;  in 
delightful  excursions  in  every  direction,  for  every- 
where we  found  interest. 

Of  course  we  went  to  Abbotsford;  but  Abbotsford 
is  something  of  a  disappointment.  One  strongly 
feels,  here  in  Melrose,  how  Scott  has  impressed  him- 
self upon  Scotland,  but  one  feels  it  the  more  strongly 
by  not  thinking  of  this  home  that  he  built,  for  it  does 
not  adequately  represent  him.  It  is  neither  as  beauti- 
ful nor  as  fitting  as  we  had  anticipated;  yet,  once 
within  the  walls  of  his  library,  one  cannot  but  feel 
keenly  the  sense  of  his  greatness  and  of  his  person- 
ality. And  there  is  not  a  more  striking  sight  in  Great 
Britain  than  the  steady  procession  of  carriages  and 
omnibuses  that  roll  back  and  forth  between  the  rail- 
way station  and  Abbotsford,  filled  with  people  who 
come  from  every  quarter  of  the  world  to  do  honor  to 
this  wonderful  Scotchman's  memory. 

We  went  in  the  afternoon  to  Smailholm  Tower, 
motoring  to  it  over  a  road  with  a  succession  of  beau- 
tiful views,  and  notably  a  view  from  where  the  road 
mounted  after  passing  through  the  ancient  hamlet  of 
Newstead,  where  lived  the  masons  who  built  Melrose 
Abbey  (what  a  touch  of  the  olden  time!)  and  we 
found  the  view  in  looking  back  up  the  green  and  glim- 
mering valley  of  the  Tweed,  which  was  a  scene  of 
wistful  beauty  in  a  mild  glitter  of  sunlight. 

We  crossed  the  Tweed  by  a  stone- arched  bridge 
and  mounted  a  long  and  lonely  road  beyond  it,  and 
motored  up  a  private  lane  and  across  a  field  and  came 


258 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

to  Smailholm ;  a  square  tower  which  stands  superbly 
on  the  summit  of  a  rocky  height,  dominating  and 
watching  over  the  country  for  miles  around.  And 
when  we  remembered  that  Scott  as  a  boy  was  sent  to 
live  near  this  tower,  and  that  he  loved  to  wander  about 
the  ruin  and  the  hilltop,  it  seemed  all  clear  how  the 
glory  of  the  ancient  days  became  part  of  the  very 
fiber  of  his  being. 

Black  rocks  are  all  about,  and  there  are  yellow 
gorse  and  heather  growing  thick,  and  high  up  in  a 
hollow  against  the  rocks  is  a  reedy  pool  upon  which 
two  swans  are  superbly  floating.  We  have  seldom 
felt  so  keen  or  vivid  an  impression  as  beside  this 
superbly-set  and  lonely  tower.  And  when  we  went 
through  its  ancient  iron  gate  and  mounted  its  ancient 
stone  spiral  and  came  out  upon  its  battlements  there 
was  a  feeling  as  if  all  Scotland  lay  before  us.  That 
gray-walled  tower  on  its  windy  height  is  one  of  the 
superb  things  of  Scotland. 

We  returned  to  Melrose  by  way  of  Bemerside  and 
Dryburgh,  the  beautiful  ancient  abbey  where  Scott 
chose  to  be  buried,  and  as  we  walked  about  through 
the  ruined  cloisters  and  passageways,  his  presence 
seemed  to  be  everywhere. 

Another  and  briefer  motor  expedition  was  to  where 
three  ancient  separate  towers  were  built  near  to  each 
other  at  a  crossroads  in  a  high  valley.  We  went 
there  over  a  road  which  gave  us  captivating  views  of 
Scottish  countryside  and  frequent  glimpses  of  the 
striking  Eildons,  which  always,  when  in  view,  make 
themselves  in  so  distinguished  a  fashion  the  center  of 
the  view.  It  was  not  that  there  was  anything  in  par- 
ticular associated  with  these  three  towers,  but  that, 
grouped  so  strikingly,  they  gave  such  an  air  of  ro- 
mantic flavor.  And  here  we  learned  how  very  beau- 
tiful a  Scotch  garden  may  be,  for  at  one  of  these 
ruins,  Langshaw,  the  old  earl  who  owns  it  has  had  his 


MELROSE  TO  TANTALLON 259 

gardener  make  it  a  glory  and  a  delight  with  flowers 
of  every  precious  color. 

We  motored  from  Melrose,  for  the  sake  of  both 
Wordsworth  and  Scott,  and  also  to  get  in  fuller  touch 
with  the  fine  spirit  of  this  Borderland,  to  St.  Mary's 
Loch;  starting  off  along  the  Tweed,  and  thence  to 
Selkirk,  and  thence  into  the  valley  of  Yarrow;  and 
as  we  drove  into  the  market-square  of  Selkirk  it  was 
worth  while  to  remember  that  it  was  into  this  square 
that  the  town  clerk  of  Selkirk,  a  shoemaker  who  had 
been  knighted  for  bravery,  came  riding  back  wounded 
from  Flodden  Field,  the  sole  survivor  of  the  Selkirk 
men,  and  he  bore  a  banner  that  he  had  captured,  and 
he  told  to  the  frightened  townsfolk  who  gathered 
about  him  of  the  dreadful  defeat  of  the  Scotch;  and 
the  Selkirk  folk,  sturdy  and  prideful  and  full  of  local 
feeling  as  they  are,  still  venerate  an  ancient  banner  of 
greenish  silk  which  they  firmly  believe  is  the  veritable 
banner  of  that  long-past  day. 

As  we  went  to  Yarrow,  we  saw  across  the  river  the 
ruins  of  Newark  Castle  rising  with  a  grim  sturdiness ; 
and  the  views,  continuing,  were  alternately  of  sheer 
wildness  and,  to  use  that  finely  descriptive  expres- 
sion of  Wordsworth's,  full  of  the  pomp  of  cultivated 
nature. 

St.  Mary's  Lake  is  itself  a  long  and  narrow  body  of 
water,  lying  in  the  midst  of  bare,  bare  hills.  And  it 
is  hard,  at  first,  for  the  American  in  Scotland  to  ap- 
preciate to  the  full  the  beauty  of  the  Scotch  bare 
hills ;  but  he  soon  comes  to  see  that  they  do  not  mean 
woodland  devastation,  and  that  there  may  be  great 
distinction  in  their  contour,  and  positive  beauty  in 
the  blended  coloring  of  their  mossj^  rocks  and  green- 
ery of  grass  and  flowering  furze  and  heather.  And 
in  this  drive  we  saw  myriads  of  tall  flowering  spikes 
of  foxgloves.  And  we  saw  a  shepherd  carrying  a  lit- 
tle lamb  upon  his  shoulder  nooked  in  a  corner  of  his 


260 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

plaid.  And  everywhere  and  always  was  a  sense  of 
fascination. 

There  was  a  chill  somberness  about  the  lake  itself, 
and  a  rainstorm  came  sweeping  across  it  with  a  very 
dramatic  effectiveness,  and  we  took  shelter  in  the  little 
inn  of  Tibbie  Shiels,  where  Scott  was  accustomed  to 
go  and  where  he  led  Wordsworth;  and  when  they 
showed  the  huge  drinking  vessel  which  they  said  these 
distinguished  visitors  used,  it  seemed  inevitable,  even 
if  irreverent,  to  suggest  to  each  other  that  now  we 
could  understand  how  Wordsworth  saw  his  "  swan  on 
still  St.  Mary's  Lake  float  double."  We  returned  to 
Melrose  by  a  circuitous  and  more  lonely  course,  and 
marveled  that  there  could  be  such  miles  of  such  lone- 
liness here. 

When  we  almost  reluctantly  left  Melrose,  and 
turned  still  farther  to  the  north,  it  was  with  a  sense 
that  we  had  been  staying  in  a  region  of  tranquil  and 
singular  charm. 

Instead  of  taking  the  main  road  from  Melrose  to 
Edinburgh,  we  went  off  through  pleasant  Earlston, 
an  ancient  little  weaving  village,  and  on  through 
Lauderdale  by  a  marvelous  road  which  led  us  up  and 
up  with  a  sense  of  never  descending,  but  always  with 
an  admirable  surface  to  the  road  and  always  with 
the  easiest  of  grades,  so  that  it  was  an  easy  matter 
to  take  the  entire  drive  of  miles  on  "  high."  It  was 
superb. 

Through  Lauderdale  we  swept  upward  by  the 
same  marvelous  road  into  the  hills  of  Lammer- 
moor  and  felt  again  the  mighty  impression  of  Scott 
— for  the  mere  word  "  Lammermoor  "  seems  to  mean 
only  Scott!  Now  and  then,  but  rarely,  we  passed 
some  village,  for  it  was  mostly  a  region  of  wild  soli- 
tariness, of  dreary  heights  tremendous  in  their  sweep- 
ing dreariness,  of  great  immensity  of  bare  levels,  with 
views  of  miles  and  miles  across  the  far-flung  moors. 


MELROSE  TO  TANTALLON 261 

and  always  there  was  the  splendid  exhilaration  of  the 
rushing  wind. 

There  were  tall  posts  at  intervals  to  mark  the  road 
in  winter-time  when  deep  snow  falls! — There  were 
no  fences,  no  walls/ no  hedges;  there  was  just  the  bare 
open  country.  We  passed  a  couple  of  young  men 
on  a  pedestrian  tour,  but  except  for  that,  in  this  great 
solitude,  there  was  rarely  a  sign  of  hfe,  except  for 
scattered  sheep  which,  unsheared  although  it  was  the 
very  end  of  June,  looked,  as  they  moved  about  with 
their  long  wool  even  hiding  their  feet,  like  little  mov- 
ing hay-stacks. 

At  length  we  descended,  by  long,  long  slopes,  and 
passed  through  several  dreary  little  villages — and 
Scotch  villages,  although  not  as  a  rule  so  bare  as 
these,  average  far  less  of  attractiveness  than  the  Eng- 
lish— and  went  motoring  off  to  the  northeast  for 
Tantallon,  by  way  of  Haddington. 

Haddington  is  a  thrifty,  orderly-built,  common- 
place, deadish,  stone-house  town,  with  an  open  square 
and  the  ancient  ruin  of  a  red-stone  church ;  this  town 
was  the  home  of  that  Jane  Welsh  Carlyle  whose  do- 
mestic affairs  have  been  given  volumes  of  exploita- 
tion, and  it  was  interesting  to  see  what  kind  of  a  town 
she  left  to  share,  with  the  irritable  Thomas,  the  de- 
lightful place  in  delightful  Chelsea  upon  which  so 
much  of  sympathy  has  been  wasted. 

Haddington  shows  also  the  ruin  of  the  castle  of 
that  Earl  of  Bothwell  who  married  Mary  Queen  of 
Scots,  a  man  generally  supposed  to  have  been  a  mere 
violent  nobody,  but  who,  as  we  are  reminded  by  the 
remains  of  his  castle,  was  really  among  the  most  pow- 
erful nobles  of  Scotland  before  he  married  Mary, 
and  at  the  same  time  a  man  of  travel  and  of  un- 
doubted bravery. 

It  surprised  us  in  approaching  Tantallon  to  find 
ourselves  once  more  running  over  attractive  sylvan 


262 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

roads  through  a  fine  farming  region  proudly  showing 
rich  crops  of  hay;  but  it  was  not  pleasant  to  see 
women  working  as  laborers  in  the  fields ;  and  at  length 
there  came  glimpses  of  the  sea,  and  we  found  that  we 
were  near  the  ancient  castle,  and  we  left  our  motor 
at  a  farmhouse  and  walked  down  a  path  of  foot- 
breaking  round  stones  to  a  bare,  flat,  smooth,  green 
promontory  jutting  out  upon  a  lofty  cliff  into  the 
bluest  of  sea  water  under  the  bluest  of  sky,  with  the 
Bass  Rock  rising  white  and  green  in  the  distance, 
and  with,  far  off,  a  silvery  shore  marking  the  farther 
side  of  the  bay;  and  about  us  white  sea-birds  were 
curving  and  screaming;  and  immediately  in  front  of 
us  was  something  which  peremptorily  and  insistently 
made  rocks  and  sea  and  birds  and  everything  else,  by 
comparison,  seem  negligible — for  it  was  Tantallon 
itself,  it  was  the  great  old  castle,  rising  in  terrible 
dignity  above  the  sea. 

Tantallon,  the  mightiest  stronghold  of  the  Doug- 
lases, is  one  of  the  overlooked  castles,  because  of  the 
difficulty  of  getting  there  except  by  motor.  And  in 
its  extent  of  ruins,  its  splendid  location,  its  massive- 
ness,  its  memories,  notably  those  of  Scott,  for  never 
did  a  man  impress  his  personality  on  so  many  places, 
it  is  most  noteworthy  and  fascinating. 

The  tremendous  walls  rise  grimly,  with  three  sides 
encompassed  by  the  sea,  which  thunders  at  the  foot  of 
the  perpendicular  cliffs  one  hundred  feet  in  height; 
and  on  the  one  landward  side  is  a  great,  straight  tur- 
reted  wall,  ditched  and  moated  and  drawbridged  to 
invulnerability.  To  "  ding  down  Tantallon "  has 
proverbially,  for  ages,  expressed  the  Scotch  idea  of 
impossibility. 

The  sea  frets  or  roars  or  dashes  forever  against  the 
foot  of  the  rocks,  and  slides  over  dangerous  green 
shallows  and  half  reveals  the  reefs  that  are  gray  and 
black  and  sinister;  and  the  wind  seems  forever  to  be 


MELROSE  TO  TANTALLON 263 

blowing.  "  It's  eerie  here,  when  the  wind  souffles 
through,"  says  the  old  caretaker,  who  walks  here 
every  morning  from  his  distant  home  and  who  is  as 
keen  about  the  keys  of  the  castle  and  about  locking  and 
unlocking  the  door  as  could  be  any  warder  of  old. 

He  takes  us  down  into  a  deep,  dark  dungeon;  "  the 
grandest  in  Scotland,"  he  tells  us,  proudly;  and  we 
descend,  candle-led,  through  dark  passages,  step  by 
step  down  into  the  heart  of  the  cKff ,  and  finally  enter 
the  dungeon  itself,  through  a  narrow  arched  door- 
way once  fastened  with  iron  grate  and  mighty  bolts 
which  fitted  in  the  holes  still  pointed  out. 

The  old  man,  in  that  grim,  faint-lit  dungeon,  ram- 
bles on  ceaselessly  about  famous  dungeon  occupants 
of  the  past,  and  it  seemed  to  him  fitting,  for  he  chuc- 
kled over  it,  that  some  by-everybody-else-forgotten 
Duchess  of  Albany — this  word  pronounced  with  the 
"  a  "  even  broader  than  in  America,  in  contrast  with 
the  very  sharp  "  a  "  of  the  Albany  of  London — was 
immured  here  for  a  year  "  for  dinging  her  tongue  "; 
and  he  mentioned  as  rather  a  light  matter  that  the 
heads  of  her  husband  and  all  her  male  relatives  were 
shoved  in  to  the  wretched  woman  while  she  was  here ; 
for  some  reason  "  dinging  her  tongue  "  seemed  the 
one  thing  inexcusable,  and  the  punishment  a  matter 
rather  fitting. 

It  was  in  climbing  up  to  the  battlements,  six  stories 
up  (we  say  six  from  counting  the  fireplaces  on  the 
way) — it  was  in  climbing  by  ancient  stone  stairways 
running  through  the  very  heart  of  the  walls,  and  in 
the  tremendous  impressions  that  came  from  walking 
these  lofty  battlements  and  mounting  upon  the  lofty 
turrets,  that  we  found  the  chief  glory  of  the  place; 
and  its  tremendousness  is  unforgettable. 

Leaving  Tantallon,  majestic  in  its  ruin,  we  jour- 
neyed rapidly  for  twenty-five  miles  along  the  Firth 
of  Forth,  passing  under  lofty,  sudden,  sugar-loafed 


264 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

Berwick  Law,  identifying  castles,  villages  and  bat- 
tlefields with  the  stirring  names  of  Scottish  history, 
passing  hundreds  of  golfers  on  rough-shorn  links 
close  to  the  waterside,  and  through,  finally,  some 
miles  of  close-built,  tram-carred  suburbs  and  at 
length  into  Edinburgh. 


The  anciext  peel  tower  at  Melrose 


A  garden  by  a  lonely  tower 


The  tower  of  Smailholm 


Grim  old  Tantallox 


CHAPTER  XXVI 

THE  LOWLANDS   OF   SCOTLAND 

EDINBURGH  is  i)eculiarly  one  of  the  cities  that 
tell  their  tale  to  the  imagination;  and  there  is 
not  only  an  old  Edinburgh,  but  a  new  Edin- 
burgh— but  even  the  new  Edinburgh  is  a  century  old 
and  is  year  by  year  gaining  more  of  mellowness  and 
dignity.  Between  the  old  city  and  the  new  is  a  great 
gulf  fixed;  a  valley  through  which  runs  the  railway, 
but  the  railway  is  entirely  masked  by  a  fine  public 
park  which  fills  the  valley,  and  this  park  is  fronted 
by  Princes  Street,  quite  one  of  the  finest  streets  in  the 
world. 

Edinburgh  is  a  city  to  be  loved;  a  city  to  be  stayed 
in;  but  it  is  not  too  busy  a  city  for  agreeable  motor- 
ing and  it  is  fine  to  swing  down  the  long  cobbled  slope 
of  High  Street  and  the  Canongate  from  the  Castle 
to  Holyrood — a  trip  impossible  by  tram-car,  for  no 
tram-cars  run  that  way,  and  very  tiresome  on  foot. 
It  is  delightful  to  go  quietly  along  the  superb  line  of 
Princes  Street  and  to  look  across  at  the  fetching  gray 
masses  of  the  old  town,  with  its  variedly  picturesque 
gables  and  its  crenelated  sky-line,  or  to  go  into  one 
of  the  fine  Edinburgh  shops,  or  to  sit  out  on  the  up- 
per balcony  of  one  of  the  ideal  tea-rooms,  with  the 
high-set  houses  of  the  ancient  town  right  across  the 
valley  and  with  the  superbly  placed  castle  topping  its 
rocky  height  and  with  Arthur's  Seat  looming  su- 
perbly on  the  left  and  with  all  the  sparkle  and  life 
and  gayety  of  Princes  Street  at  our  very  feet. 

At  one  of  these  tea-rooms  we  spoke  of  some  ex- 


266 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

quisite  little  cakes  that  were  served,  and  we  said  that 
they  reminded  us  of  some  cakes  with  which  we  had 
become  familiar  on  the  Rue  Roy  ale  of  Tours; 
whereat  the  pleased  proprietor  said  that  it  had  al- 
ways been  traditionally  believed  that  the  recipe  for 
these  characteristic  Edinburgh  cakes  was  brought 
over  from  Touraine  by  the  French  cooks  of  Mary 
Queen  of  Scots. 

The  towering  ancient  houses  of  Edinburgh,  houses 
of  great  height,  with  story  above  story,  houses  filled 
with  smells  as  evil  as  they  are  medieval,  are  steadily 
disappearing;  and  the  castle  has  lost  much  of  its  old- 
time  grandeur  through  huge,  ill-looking  boxlike  ex- 
crescences built  upon  it  in  place  of  fine  old  battle- 
ments; but  the  view  of  the  old  town  has  still  a  vast 
picturesqueness.  And  there  are  many  individual 
things  of  interest  to  see.  The  ancient  crown  jewels 
of  Scotland,  preserved  in  the  castle,  are  particularly 
worth  while,  for  they  show  so  admirably  the  old-time 
jewelers'  work,  which  the  English  crown  jewels,  al- 
though much  more  valuable,  do  not  do,  as  they  have 
been  so  tinkered  up  for  each  ensuing  coronation  as 
to  lose  their  original  character. 

A  feature  of  much  interest  in  connection  with  this 
castle  is  that,  almost  always,  it  is  garrisoned  by  troops 
in  the  brilliantly  picturesque  Highland  costume,  and 
the  fortunate  visitor  will  see  these  troops  parading  on 
the  esplanade  in  front  of  the  gate.  And  there  are 
old  houses  worth  seeing,  along  the  High  Street,  and 
it  is  extremely  interesting  to  pick  out  the  one  which 
was  the  veritable  home  of  grim  John  Knox  and  fas- 
cinating to  look  into  the  ancient  close  of  the  inn  where 
the  officers  of  Prince  Charlie  made  their  headquarters, 
and  still  more  fascinating  to  go  about  ancient  Holy- 
rood,  with  its  rooms  and  passages  full  of  the  memo- 
ries of  Mary  Queen  of  Scots,  and  with  its  veritable, 
ancient  Stuart  furniture,  made  for  these  very  rooms. 


LOWLANDS  OF  SCOTLAND 267 

and  with  its  ancient  portraits  of  the  old-time  people 
whose  lives  were  associated  with  this  place — ^but  this 
does  not  refer  to  the  long  line  of  made-to-order  kings 
hanging  in  frames  along  both  sides  of  the  great  ban- 
queting hall!  And  even  the  comparatively  meager 
remains  of  the  ancient  Abbey  of  Holyrood  are  of 
interest,  although  we  have  been  seeing  so  many 
finer  and  greater  ecclesiastical  ruins. 

In  a  little  graveyard,  walled  in  and  almost  forgot- 
ten, in  the  newer  part  of  the  city,  it  was  curious  to 
come  upon  the  unexpectedness  of  a  monument  in 
memory  of  the  Scotchmen  who  died  in  our  Civil 
War;  "to  preserve  the  jewel  of  liberty  and  the 
framework  of  freedom,"  as  the  noble  inscription, 
quoted  from  Lincoln,  reads. 

There  is  no  finer  example  than  the  new  town  of 
Edinburgh,  with  its  dignified  streets  and  crescents, 
of  admirable  and  adequate  town-house  architecture. 
But  neither  the  fine-looking  present-day  homes  nor 
the  houses  of  ancient  days  are  of  strong  enough  ap- 
peal to  keep  the  motorist  within  the  limits  of  even 
an  Edinburgh,  when  he  is  at  liberty  to  respond  to  the 
call  of  the  country  and  of  the  free  fresh  air.  The 
insistent  lure  of  the  road  ever  leads  onward. 

But  before  leaving  Edinburgh  we  took  an  evening 
run  down  to  Leith,  the  ancient  port  of  the  city, 
through  stone-block-paved  streets,  close-lined  with 
high-set  stone  tenements;  and  at  Leith  we  found  the 
little  fishing  boats  tucked  away  for  the  night  in  stone 
basins,  and  the  fishermen  chatting  and  smoking  con- 
f  abulatively  as  they  sat  on  the  stone  ledges,  and  there 
was  about  these  men  a  certain  suggestion  of  Holland 
in  their  costume.  The  fishwives  were  even  more 
Dutch  in  appearance,  with  their  heavy  woolen  stock- 
ings, their  full  skirts  almost  twelve  inches  from  the 
ground,  and  their  short  sleeves  that  stopped  within 
two  inches  of  the  elbow  and  turned  back  in  a  cuff 


268 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

of  white  muslin  to  the  shoulder.  Every  fishwife 
seemed  to  be  standing  in  her  doorway,  knitting,  and 
on  every  doorstep  were  the  waiting  fish-creels  which 
the  women  next  morning  were  to  carry  on  their  backs 
through  the  streets  of  Edinburgh,  calling  out  their 
high-pitched  wailing  call  of  "  Caller  herrin'."  Next 
morning  we  ended  our  delightful  and  restful  stay  in 
Edinburgh,  and  headed  our  motor  onward,  and  first 
in  the  direction  of  the  castle  of  Craigmillar. 

There  are  so  many  places  connected  with  the  un- 
happiness  of  the  career  of  Queen  Mary  that  it  is  a 
pleasure  to  find  at  least  one  that  is  associated  with 
the  brief  time  preceding  the  beginning  of  tragedy. 
The  castle  of  Craigmillar,  reached  by  a  short  but 
devious  ride  out  of  Edinburgh,  is  of  great  extent, 
and,  although  the  building  is  a  ruin,  there  are  many 
rooms  through  which  one  may  still  wander ;  and  from 
the  particular  room  which  history  or  tradition  asso- 
ciates with  Queen  Mary  herself,  the  window  does  not 
open  toward  distant  Edinburgh,  which  is  in  view 
from  much  of  the  castle  and  where  her  enemies  were 
in  force,  but  out  over  sweet  meadows  and  woodlands 
to  the  glory  of  far-away  hills  toward  the  sunny 
southward. 

The  attitude  of  an  excellent  custodian  of  any  old 
place  is  always  keenly  against  restorations,  and  here 
at  Craigmillar  the  admirable  guardian  was  no  excep- 
tion. "  Much  of  the  stone  roof  is  new;  a  great  mis- 
take," he  said  sadly.  On  the  whole,  we  found  Craig- 
millar highly  worth  while. 

Through  a  rather  bare  and  disagreeable  stretch  we 
made  a  short  run  to  Roslyn  Chapel  and  Roslyn 
Castle,  but  found  them  of  rather  feeble  interest  after 
the  many  noble  things  we  had  been  seeing,  and  they 
do  not  at  all  measure  up  to  the  ideas  evoked  by  "  the 
lordly  line  of  high  St.  Clair."  However,  Roslyn 
Chapel  is  an  elaboration  of  detail,  and  is  a  finished, 


LOWLANDS  OF  SCOTLAND 269 

indeed  almost  over-finished,  fragment  of  a  church 
that  was  never  built. 

From  Roslyn,  rather  than  return  prosaically  by  the 
way  we  had  come,  to  Edinburgh,  and  thence  go  on, 
we  aimed  diagonally  for  the  Forth  Bridge,  which  we 
wished  to  look  at;  and  it  was  a  ride  well  worth  while 
to  round  under  the  shadow  of  the  Braid  Hills,  piling 
up  against  the  sky,  and  motor  forward  through  a 
pleasant  and  varied  country  thick  with  the  invariable 
golf  links — ^golf  links  seem  to  be  underfoot  all  the 
time  in  Scotland ! — with  now  and  then  unusual  views 
of  Edinburgh,  with  its  neighboring  Salisbury  Crags, 
its  superbly  cliffed  castle,  and  the  great  perspective 
of  the  city  itself,  spreading  out  toward  the  sea. 

We  reached  the  Forth  down  a  road  from  which 
we  had  a  splendid  view  of  the  Forth  Bridge,  a  struc- 
ture which  stands  preeminent  of  its  kind;  and  when 
a  train  went  over  it,  with  engine  and  cars  seeming  not 
much  bigger  than  flies  crawling  between  the  huge 
cantilevers,  we  had  some  idea  of  how  big  the  bridge 
really  is. 

From  here  we  motored  up  the  southern  side  of  the 
Forth,  with  a  long  range  of  mountains  in  the  dis- 
tance and  in  front  of  us  some  positively  stupendous 
artificial  mountains,  formed  of  refuse  from  shale-oil 
mines,  so  large  and  so  many  as  to  impose  their  lofty 
truncated  characteristic  upon  the  landscape. 

Passing  this  region,  the  road  led  us  pleasantly  to 
Linlithgow,  that  ancient  palace  of  Scotch  royalty, 
still  remaining  in  complete  extent,  though  in  ruinous 
condition,  where  Queen  Mary  was  born.  And  it  was 
curious  to  think  that  we  were  really  at  the  very  place 
where  that  strange  career  began  which  led  Mary  to 
be  Queen  of  France  and  Queen  of  Scotland  and 
finally  the  victim  of  the  Queen  of  England. 

Linlithgow  is  still  a  fair  and  stately  palace,  built 
in  the  form  of  a  great  hollow, square,  and  it  stands 


270 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

in  a  sweet,  fair  bit  of  countryside  on  a  slightly-rising 
knoll  above  a  pretty  loch,  at  the  very  edge  of  a 
bare,  leather-working  old  town. 

As  we  go  on  our  way  toward  Stirling  there  comes 
a  cold  and  dreary  rain,  and  under  a  hedge  we  see 
a  pair  of  trampers,  a  man  and  woman,  shivering  away 
from  the  chilling  wind  and  wetness;  and  we  wonder 
what  the  great  army  of  similar  trampers  throughout 
Great  Britain  do  when  the  nights  are  wet  and  cold. 

Tall  trees  border  the  road,  and  across  the  Forth 
are  misty  masses  of  hills,  and  in  the  fields  some  farm- 
ers are  plowing,  and  we  meet  a  farmer  driving  with 
horses  abreast — for  horses  hitched  tandem  is  not  the 
custom  in  this  northern  part  of  the  country.  The 
road  is  of  extraordinarily  good  quality,  the  best  thus 
far  of  the  excellent  roads  of  Scotland.  There  are 
sweet  pools  tucked  among  low  hills,  delightful  glades, 
a  stately  gate  opening  into  an  avenue  that  doubtless 
leads  to  some  stately  hidden  house,  and  ever  and  anon 
the  greenery  is  brightened  with  brilliant  yellow 
gorse. 

We  passed  through  Falkirk  and  remembered  that 
beside  this  town  there  came  a  gleam  of  glory  to  the 
retreating  army  of  Prince  Charlie ;  and  Prince  Char- 
lie does  so  connect  what  seem  the  Stuarts  of  history 
with  our  own  time,  for  both  Washington  and  Frank- 
lin must  have  received  the  news  of  Falkirk  and  the 
other  fights  of  that  brief  uprising  as  contemporary 
events  of  great  interest. 

The  valley  broadens,  there  are  tall  chimneys  send- 
ing up  smoke  and  fire,  a  purple  line  of  hills  becomes 
more  deeply  empurpled,  the  rain  ceases  but  the 
diminishing  day  becomes  colder  and  gloomier,  the  pur- 
ple hills  creep  nearer  to  us;  and  suddenly  we  see 
rock-perched  Stirling  Castle  rising  nobly  in  the 
distance. 

Before  reaching  Stirling,  we  turned  aside  a  little 


LOWLANDS  OF  SCOTLAND 271 

to  visit  one  of  the  most  romantic  and  famous  of  bat- 
tlefields, that  of  Bannockburn.  And  here,  on  a  com- 
manding knoll,  they  still  preserve  the  ancient  bored 
stone  in  which  Robert  Bruce  placed  his  standard  on 
that  famous  day,  six  hundred  years  ago,  and  from 
this  spot  the  course  of  the  battle  may  still  be  under- 
stood. A  rolKng  country  is  all  about,  with  fields  and 
farmland,  and  here  and  there  a  pleasant  home;  and 
a  Scotchman,  driving  by  in  his  two-wheeled  gig, 
draws  up,  seeing  that  we  are  strangers,  and  explains 
all  about  Bannockburn  with  wealth  of  intricate  local 
detail;  for  Scotchmen  remember  Bannockburn  with 
immense  pride  after  all  these  centuries. 

We  go  on  to  the  city  of  Stirling,  clustered  as  it  is 
at  the  base  and  up  one  side  of  the  towering  rock 
on  which  Stirling  Castle  lifts  its  ancient  walls;  and 
after  dinner  we  climb  the  long,  long  slope,  up  through 
the  streets  of  the  town,  and  through  an  interesting 
broadening,  far  up,  into  a  sort  of  market-place  lined 
with  old-time  houses;  and  we  go  higher  than  all  this, 
past  some  ruined  once-while  mansions  of  centuries 
ago,  to  the  old  castle  on  the  very  top. 

But  we  go  on  foot,  for  it  does  not  seem  a  mo- 
torable  hill,  and  we  find,  as  we  climb  far  up,  that 
there  is  an  additional  reason  why  this  road  is  not  very 
motorable,  for  streets  and  sidewalks  alike,  along  the 
steep  road,  literally  swarm  with  children  who  are 
sprawling,  crawling,  walking  or  playing,  the  swarms 
being  interspersed  with  mothers  holding  babies 
by  plaids  folded  long  and  tied  against  the  shoulder 
in  such  a  way  as  to  leave  the  arms  of  the  mothers  free ; 
and  every  woman  is  knitting,  her  needles  flying 
steadily  and  her  eyes  not  watching  the  work. 

Reaching  the  top  and  the  castle,  we  wandered 
about  the  battlements  in  the  long,  late  twilight,  and 
looked  off  at  the  great  broad  levels  far  below  us, 
where  the  mazy  Forth  unravels  in  one  great,  slow- 


272 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

curving  bend  after  another — and  an  amazing  series 
of  river-bends  it  is. 

Even  more  interesting  than  the  picturesque  bit  of 
antiquity  on  the  top  of  this  height  are  the  wide- 
spreading  views ;  and  from  a  corner  of  the  castle  waU 
we  had  a  more  superb  effect  of  sunset  and  landscape 
than  anywhere  else  on  our  entire  journey.  It  had 
been  storming,  and  the  clouds  still  hung  in  scattered 
masses  along  the  horizon ;  it  was  nine  o'clock,  and  the 
sun  itself,  out  of  sight  from  where  we  were  standing, 
had  thrown  a  superb  yellow  luster  over  the  entire  land- 
scape; and  then,  as  a  dramatic  surprise,  it  laid  an 
immense  band  of  gold  across  miles  and  miles  of  slopes 
and  meadows,  and  threw  showers  of  gold  on  the 
clouds;  and  off  at  the  northward  the  heights  of  the 
Highlands  stood  in  lines  of  royal  purple,  and  all 
the  scene  was  a  glory  of  purple  and  gold. 

Next  morning  we  left  Stirling,  crossing  the  Forth 
on  a  bridge  beside  an  ancient  arched  stone  bridge  long 
disused,  and  past  a  towering  monument  to  that  Wal- 
lace who  looms  so  toweringly  in  Scotch  history,  and 
we  remembered  that  here  he  fought  one  of  his  brave 
fights;  and  we  go  on  through  Alloa  and  toward 
Dunfermline. 

We  had  been  noticing,  on  some  of  our  days  of  late, 
a  shortage  of  flowers,  and  we  had  feared  that  the 
shortage  would  increase,  but  on  this  road  there  were 
many,  many  flowers,  and  especially  roses;  little  cot- 
tages seemed  to  have  a  veritable  rivalry  in  roses,  in 
great  bushes  and  vines,  and  there  were  long  stretches 
of  wild  roses,  pink  and  white,  along  the  roadsides. 
Flowering  foxgloves  grew  thick  and  wild,  and  in  all 
it  was  a  beautiful  road  through  a  beautiful  country; 
and  a  line  of  lofty  mountains  went  marching  along 
on  our  left. 

We  passed  a  caravan  of  three  little  wagons,  with 
low,  rounded  cloth  tops ;  but  these  were  English  folk 


The  sunky  ruins  of  Cilaig3iillar 


Far  up  the  hill  toward  Stirlixg  Castle 


Where  Charles  the  First  was  borst 


mm 


The  St.  Andrews  golf  links 


LOWLANDS  OF  SCOTLAND 273 

and  not  gypsies,  and  the  children  peered  curiously 
out  at  us ;  we  passed  a  herd  of  cattle  that  blocked  the 
road  for  some  minutes;  we  passed  children  just  out 
of  school,  with  all  the  boys  and  many  of  the  girls 
barefooted;  a  cold  rain  came  on,  but  we  barely  more 
than  got  the  top  up  than  the  rain  stopped  and  all  was 
clear  again ;  we  went  past  a  cluster  of  white  cottages 
with  roofs  of  red  tile,  and  through  rich  farmland  and 
pastures,  with  fat  cattle  and  fat  horses  grazing;  and 
cart-horses  that  we  met  on  the  road  had  collars  rising 
high,  in  points  of  black  leather  ornamented  with 
brass  or  nickle  circles  or  with  bunches  of  ribbons  or 
tall  and  slender  feathers. 

And  we  came  to  Dunfermline,  where  there  are 
some  ancient  ruins  of  minor  importance  that  are 
readily  to  be  seen  from  a  main  road,  and  among  them 
is  an  ancient  palace  ruin  which  is  of  interest  as  being 
the  birthplace  of  the  ill-fated  Charles  the  First;  and 
the  city  is  also  the  birthplace  of  one  the  very  reverse 
of  ill-fated,  for  there  is  here  the  simple  little  cottage, 
which  looks  like  so  many  other  little  Scotch  cottages, 
where  first  saw  the  light  the  American  man  of  many 
libraries!  Dunfermline  is  an  old  linen-weaving  cen- 
ter, and  has  been  heavily  endowed  and  aided,  and 
gives  an  impression  of  being  a  sort  of  personally  con- 
ducted town ;  and  in  all  is  a  place  neither  picturesque 
nor  attractive. 

For  a  time  there  are  bare  country  and  poor  vil- 
lages, and  then  villages  and  countryside  grow  more 
attractive  again,  and  before  long  we  come  to  the  ex- 
ceedingly long  town  of  Kirkcaldy,  stretched  out  along 
beside  the  Forth,  and  then  we  follow  a  road  that  rolls 
us  on  through  rolling  country,  past  now  and  then  a 
town  among  the  hills;  and  clouds  and  rain  gather 
over  the  water,  and  through  a  cleft  we  catch  an  un- 
expected sight  of  towering  Edinburgh  Castle,  far  off 
on  the  farther  side  of  the  Forth,  for  we  are  going 


274 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

in  an  easterly  direction  and  practically  paralleling  our 
course  from  Tantallon  westward.  And  all  this  here- 
abouts is  in  fascinating  Fife — the  ancient  "  King- 
dom of  Fife." 

Past  Kirkcaldy  we  notice  frequent  orchards,  and 
there  is  considerable  manufacturing,  with  trim  and 
rather  commonplace  villages,  and  we  make  a  detour 
of  three  miles  to  the  left  and  come,  in  a  lovely  bit 
of  old  Scotland,  to  the  ancient  Scotch  palace  of  Falk- 
land; a  long-corridored,  attractive  old  place,  some- 
how suggestive  of  the  Touraine  country,  and  thus 
remindful  of  the  great  amount  of  French  influence  in 
Scotland.  Much  of  the  palace  is  preserved,  though 
very  much  has  vanished,  and  there  is  still  a  fine  old 
gateway,  and  there  is  still  one  of  those  grim  prison 
rooms  known  as  bottle-dungeons,  with  its  ceiling 
curving  in  and  down  and  away  from  its  only  entrance, 
which  is  a  hole  in  the  center  of  its  top.  In  one  of  the 
dungeons  of  this  palace,  but  with  its  identity  lost, 
the  Duke  of  Rothesay,  the  eldest  son  of  the  King  of 
Scotland,  was  starved  to  death,  as  described  in  the 
*'  Fair  Maid  of  Perth,"  Gve  hundred  years  ago — ^how 
the  centuries  do  merge  so  readily  into  one  another! — 
and  it  is  curious  that  the  title  of  Duke  of  Rothesay 
is  still  borne  by  the  eldest  son  of  the  King  of  Great 
Britain. 

We  swing  back  to  the  main  road  to  the  eastward, 
and  pass  through  a  little  village  whose  front  gardens 
are  a  glow  of  tall,  dainty  delphiniums,  or  a  blaze  of 
yellow  nasturtiums,  or  rich  in  white  pinks  and  in 
orange  lilies.  We  pass  through  Cupar — a  pleasant, 
busy,  clean  place — and  then  once  more  through  a 
beautiful  country,  past  a  village  whose  little  front 
gardens  are  marvels  of  glow  with  great  masses  of 
snapdragon,  with  walls  reddish  pink  with  perennial 
pea,  with  numberless  blossoms  of  the  white  candy- 
tuft, with  bushes  of  rosemary  and  of  golden  box. 


LOWLANDS  OF  SCOTLAND 275 

Through  alternate  hedges  and  low  stone  walls  we 
faintly  see  lines  of  mist-dimmed  hills,  and  it  is  fine 
farming  country,  with  rows  of  orderly  haystacks  each 
looking  exactly  like  a  monster  charlotte  russe  under 
a  woven  cap  of  hay;  and  thus  we  come  to  St. 
Andrews. 


CHAPTER  XXVII 

THE   HIGHLANDS   OF  SCOTLAND 

THE  last  part  of  the  run  to  St.  Andrews  was 
half  a  dozen  level  miles  along  the  North  Sea 
road,  for  here  we  have  come  to  the  sea  again. 
St.  Andrews  has  ancient  ruins,  though  in  rather  frag- 
mentary condition — a  cathedral  and  a  castle  and  a 
high  tower,  that  were  built  in  exceedingly  effective 
positions  overhanging  the  sea,  and  they  are  of  dig- 
nity and  importance  in  Scottish  annals. 

These  ruins  of  St.'  Andrews,  however,  are  not  of 
the  first  order  of  interest,  but  its  golf  links  and  its 
sea-bathing  are  extremely  interesting — at  least,  the 
sea-bathing  was  on  the  day  we  were  there.  St.  An- 
drews is  the  fashionable  resort  of  Scotland,  and  the 
bathing  is  fashionably  done;  or  at  least  exclusively; 
so  exclusively,  indeed,  that  the  women  bathe  in  rocky 
pools  entirely  by  themselves — ^but  in  full  view  of  the 
cliff  top,  where  are  a  promenade  and  seats  for  towns- 
folk and  visitors!  And  it  was  mildly  astonishing  to 
see,  in  this  fashionable,  ecclesiastical  old  town,  what 
may  be  called  untrammeledness  as  to  costume,  and  as 
to  mermaidlike  posing  among  the  rocks. 

The  golf  links,  the  most  famous  in  the  world,  are 
distinctly  disappointing  in  appearance,  hemmed  in 
as  they  are  by  railway  sheds  and  a  line  of  railway  track. 
But  there  is  a  fine  beach  on  the  farther  side  and  a 
beautiful  surf,  and  in  spite  of  the  look  of  the  links,  un- 
couth to  anyone  accustomed  to  bright,  green,  smooth 
turf  on  golf  links,  we  were  quite  ready  to  believe  these 
to  be  of  supremely  good  quality,  and  it  was  inter- 

276 


HIGHLANDS  OF  SCOTLAND 277 

esting  to  learn  that  for  the  payment  of  a  small  fee 
visitors  are  at  liberty  to  play  there. 

"  And  so  very  much  depends,"  as  a  Scotch  player 
put  it  to  us,  "  upon  the  kind  of  golf  ball  one  uses. 
For  myself,  I  use  the  very  best  kind  made  in  Great 
Britain."  And  he  showed  one;  and  it  was  stamped 
with  the  name  of  the  London  agent  of  an  American 
factory!  And  we  thought  we  now  saw  a  reason 
why  a  very  large  area  of  red,  white  and  blue  should 
be  gayly  flying  on  the  best  hotel  of  the  several 
close  by! 

Late  in  the  afternoon  we  ran  on  to  the  north  and 
came  to  the  River  Tay  and  found  an  admirable  steam 
ferry,  which  was  entered  on  one  side  and  left  on  the 
other  side,  instead  of  being  entered  and  left  by  oppo- 
site ends. 

The  Tay  is  very  broad  here,  and  is  really  an  arm 
of  the  sea;  and  we  looked  with  interest  at  the  new 
railroad  bridge  above  us,  which  has  replaced  the  one 
which  went  down  with  such  dramatic  disaster  one 
stormy  night  some  years  ago.  We  landed  in  Dun- 
dee and  ran  through  the  broad  streets  of  this  fine, 
busy,  self-respecting  city  to  our  hotel. 

To-day  was  the  first  day  in  Scotland  on  which  we 
had  counted  the  railroad  grade  crossings  that  we  came 
to,  and  the  total  was  nine ;  and  we  noticed,  at  the  one 
or  two  where  we  had  to  wait  for  trains,  that  the  same 
practice  prevails  that  we  notice  in  England ;  for,  the 
gates  are  shut  exactly  at  the  moment  at  which  the 
train  is  scheduled  (always  pronounced  "  sheduled  " 
on  this  side  of  the  ocean)  to  approach  and  that  then, 
no  matter  how  many  minutes  late  the  train  may  be, 
everybody  must  wait.  And  sometimes  the  wait  is 
long  and  patience-trying  and  there  is  always  still 
more  exasperation  in  the  creeping  leisureliness  with 
which  the  gatekeeper  opens,  by  hand,  the  roadway 
after  the  train  has  passed. 


278 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

We  liked  Dundee,  for  it  seems  so  genial  and  en- 
terprising, but  it  really  has  no  sights  to  detain  one; 
and  yet  it  does  have  one  delightful  sight,  after  all, 
for  along  the  whole  length  of  its  main  street  it  has 
great  balls  of  flowers  in  bloom,  in  great  ball-baskets 
on  the  trolley  poles  that  run  down  the  middle  of  the 
road,  and  these  flowers  are  a  very  pretty  sight, 
indeed. 

We  ran  next  morning,  from  Dundee  to  Perth,  for 
a  trifle  over  twenty  miles  through  what  is  called  the 
Carse  of  Gowrie,  a  level  plain,  an  extremely  rich 
farming  region,  with  villages  of  stone  cottages,  gayly 
bedecked  with  flowers  and  with  mossy  roofs  of  tile 
or  slate  or  even  of  thatch  prettily  mossed  in  many 
shades. 

And  we  noticed  a  sight  which  at  once  aroused  our 
sympathy:  a  fine  dog,  a  collie,  barking  dolorously, 
tied  underneath  a  wagon  marked  in  great  letters, 
"  D.  C." — which  of  course  meant  "  Dog  Catcher  " ; 
but  when  the  driver  stopped  in  front  of  a  cottage  and 
opened  the  doors  of  the  wagon,  at  the  back,  we  saw 
that  our  sympathy  was  wasted,  for  it  was  a  bread 
wagon  and  the  letters  were  a  company  name ;  another 
of  the  myriad  bread  wagons  that  we  have  been  see- 
ing in  Scotland,  not  only  in  towns,  but  on  the  coun- 
try roads,  and  especially  north  of  the  Forth;  and, 
even  if  the  Scotch  folk  exemplify  the  old  phrase  and 
live  by  bread  alone,  they  could  hardly  eat  up  as  much 
as  we  have  seen! 

Perth  is  an  ancient  city  with  its  ancient  landmarks 
gone;  but  it  is  a  charming  little  city,  a  beautifully 
situated  city,  and  there  are  some  attractive  and  al- 
most old,  narrow  passages,  called  "  vennels,"  that  pic- 
turesquely attract  and  which  are  likely  to  yield 
antique  treasures  from  their  tiny  little  shops.  A 
clean,  bright  city  this  is,  and  of  course  one's  fancy 
pictures  the  "  fair  maid  of  Perth  "  here.     Directly 


HIGHLANDS  OF  SCOTLAND 279 

on  the  riverside  there  is  still  the  great  level  Inch, 
where  the  terrible  clan  battle  was  fought  out  so 
grimly  so  long,  long  ago ;  for  it  was  a  very  real  con- 
flict that  Scott  puts  into  his  pages.  And  it  may  be 
mentioned  that  the  Inch,  being  an  inch,  takes  a  mile 
or  so  of  river-front.  At  one  end  of  the  Inch  there  is 
a  monument  to  the  men  of  a  regiment  of  Cam- 
eronians,  and  we  noticed  with  interest  that  the  regi- 
ment saw  service  not  only  in  India,  South  Africa  and 
in  Crimea,  but  in  America  in  1814. 

Accompanied  by  friends  in  their  own  motor  who 
wished  to  show  us  an  unusual  road,  we  motored  out 
of  Perth  for  the  Devil's  Elbow.  It  was  a  sapphire 
morning;  and  soon  there  were  mountains  all  around 
us,  and  other  and  loftier  mountains  in  blue  undula- 
tions on  the  horizon.  We  went  by  way  of  Blair- 
gowrie, and  all  around  us  in  that  vicinity  were  enor- 
mous acreages  of  red-raspberry  bushes,  and  we  found 
that  they  were  cultivated  here  for  jam  factories.  In 
this  vicinity,  too,  we  passed  a  wonderful  hedge  of  old 
towering  beech-trees,  which  were  planted  many  years 
ago,  very  close  together,  and  now  reached  to  the 
height  of  well  over  a  hundred  feet.  They  form  a 
marvelous  hedge  and  are  clipped  in  perpendicular 
smoothness  as  high  up  as  ladders  can  with  ingenuity 
be  raised  for  the  clippers. 

We  come  to  the  Bridge  of  Cally,  and  here  the  road 
forks  and  we  take  the  wilder  fork  of  the  two  toward 
the  right  and  it  leads  us  up  a  wonderfully  pictur- 
esque road,  ever  more  and  more  beautiful,  through 
alternating  richness  and  bareness  and  among  great 
heights  and  solitudes,  for  we  are  mounting  through 
the  great  pass  of  Glen  Shee.  On  one  side,  down  be- 
low us,  is  a  mountain  stream  in  a  prodigious  hurry, 
and  valley  and  mountains  are  alike  a  faint  glory  of 
heather  in  its  early  lavender  tint. 

The  road  is  not  nearly  so  good  as  we  have  been 


280 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

accustomed  to,  but  it  is  wonderful  that  such  a  road 
as  this  is  kept  up  through  this  region  of  utter  wild- 
ness;  and  on  this  road,  for  the  first  time  in  Great 
Britain,  there  is  a  considerable  scattering  of  loose 
stones.  On  the  somewhat  easier  slopes  on  our  left  we 
gradually  came  to  realize  that  lines  of  gi*eat  stone 
walls  had  in  places  a  curious  resemblance  to  the 
shapes  of  houses,  though  at  first  we  did  not  take  them 
really  to  be  houses;  but  houses  they  were — ^houses 
they  had  once  been — for  this  valley,  now  so  desolate, 
was  once  thinly  inhabited  by  cottagers,  shepherds, 
and  weavers,  each  cottage  having  its  hand-loom;  but 
the  coming  in  of  machinery  killed  the  hand-loom  in- 
dustry and  brought  poverty,  and  rich  men  wanted 
the  region  for  grouse-shooting,  and  the  population 
were  induced  and  compelled  to  leave  and  their  little 
houses  were  dismantled.  They  were  small,  little 
places,  huddled  against  the  mountain-side  from  the 
storms,  and  to  take  off  the  roofs  was  almost  all  that 
was  necessary  to  make  their  fronts  look  like  parts 
of  an  ordinary  field  wall;  and  these  ghosts  of  homes 
add  to  the  tragic  loneliness  of  the  valley. 

From  what  is  called  the  Spital  of  Glen  Shee,  a 
tiny  little  whitewashed  inn,  the  road  passes  on  to  a 
still  greater  loneliness,  and  here  and  there  in  hollows 
and  on  the  mountain-tops  the  snow  has  still  remained. 
And  at  length  we  came  to  the  Devil's  Elbow,  fit- 
tingly named  as  it  is  from  its  dangerous  curve,  as 
if  the  devil  had  twisted  his  hand  back  to  his  shoul- 
der to  make  the  elbow-angle  sharp  and  savage.  Still, 
with  care,  this  bend  was  safely  manipulated;  and  in 
fact  it  was  not  really  so  dangerous,  though  it  gave 
the  impression  of  being  so  among  those  grim  sur- 
roundings, as  one  or  two  other  places  where  we  had 
already  been  on  this  trip. 

We  continued  for  a  distance  beyond  Devil's  El- 
bow and  rose  to  a  sort  of  watershed  height,  where 


ROSE-BOWEUED    SCOTCII    COTTAGES 


The  Biskam  Wood  of  Macbeth 


In  the   pass  of  Killiecrankie 


A   FAMILY  OF  TRJ 


HIGHLANDS  OF  SCOTLAND 281 

views  tremendously  grand  included  heights  over 
heights  in  all  directions.  And  here  in  this  superb 
spot,  with  mountains  of  stern  and  solemn  beauty 
stretching  off  in  every  direction,  was  our  Farthest 
North! 

A  curious  thing  is  that  these  mountains,  although 
they  have  so  towering  an  effect,  are  actually,  even  the 
highest,  barely  more  than  four  thousand  feet  in  alti- 
tude. But  that  they  do  really  have  all  the  effect  of 
being  of  tremendous  height  is  the  important  point, 
after  all,  and  such  an  effect  they  do  certainly  have. 
From  here  we  might  have  gone  on  farther  to  the 
northward,  but  that  farther  region  would  have  been 
not  only  practically  without  historical  interest,  but 
also  without  scenic  interest  as  compared  with  what 
we  have  been  seeing  in  Scotland  and  what  we  are 
going  to  see  within  the  next  few  days.  And  here  in 
this  wild  spot  we  are  not  only  so  far  to  the  northward, 
and  not  only  among  impressive  mountains,  but  are 
on  a  road  which  itself  climbs  to  a  height  of  two  thou- 
sand feet  above  the  sea — which  is  very  high  indeed 
for  any  road  of  Great  Britain — and  so  sudden  has 
been  the  rise  that  since  leaving  the  Spital  of  Glen 
Shee  we  have  climbed  about  nine  hundred  feet. 

From  here  we  retraced  our  way,  with  somewhat  of 
variation  as  to  road,  to  Perth,  where  we  spent  the 
night.  There,  our  room  looked  out  toward  the  broad, 
swift  River  Tay  and  we  went  to  sleep  to  the  sound  of 
its  soft  roaring  under  the  stone-arched  bridge,  and 
we  awoke  now  and  then  in  the  night  and  ever  was 
that  soft,  fascinating  sound;  and  to  us  the  memory 
of  Perth  is  of  the  long  sandy  Inch  and  of  the  softly- 
sounding  river. 

Perth  is  the  gateway  of  the  Highlands;  and  here 
at  the  gate,  both  in  the  gardens  of  the  city  and  in  the 
countryside  around  about,  we  notice  again  what  a 
glory  there  is  of  flowers  and  of  what  a  wide  variety 


282 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

of  kind  and  color ;  whole  gardens  azure  blue  with 
delphiniums  and  anchusa,  whole  cottage  fronts  a  bril- 
liant velvety  scarlet  with  a  little  vine  called  tropeo- 
lum,  growing  with  such  great  success  only  here  in 
Perthshire. 

At  the  hotel  in  Perth  we  found,  as  in  so  many 
places,  that  there  was  no  encouragement  to  the  Ameri- 
can to  ask  for  coffee  for  breakfast,  and  we  noticed 
that  the  guests  who  wished  tea  were  given  individual 
teapots  and  silver  jugs  of  water,  but  that  the  out- 
landers  that  wished  coffee  had  it  poured  gingerly  by 
a  waiter  who  tried  to  make  it  half  milk.  They  sim- 
ply do  not  understand  coffee,  and  the  question, 
"  White  coffee  or  black?  "  is  a  very  customary  one  all 
over  Great  Britain,  and  the  general  idea  is  to  have 
the  coffee  poor  to  begin  with  and  then  make  it  as 
much  like  white  milk  as  possible.  And  all  this,  not  that 
they  are  inhospitable  to  strangers,  but  that  few  of 
them  have  any  comprehension  of  what  good  coffee 
means. 

We  left  Perth  in  the  glory  of  another  perfect 
morning;  it  had  rained  while  we  breakfasted,  but  the 
sky  had  cleared  and  the  air  was  enchantingly  pure. 
We  struck  out  for  the  northward,  but  a  little  more 
to  the  northwest  than  the  road  to  the  Devil's  Elbow, 
for  this  morning  we  are  following  the  valley  of  the 
Tay ;  and  our  minds  are  so  filled  with  the  grim  glories 
of  yesterday  that  we  are  anticipating  other  sternly 
beautiful  views — ^and  so  it  is  with  pleasurable  sur- 
prise that  we  find  ourselves  running  on  among  moun- 
tains purple  and  green,  ever  luring  and  alluring,  over 
a  level  road  lovely  in  the  extreme,  with  beeches  on  the 
hillside  as  if  in  parks  and  among  them  a  dreamy, 
ferny  undergrowth  in  pale-green  Hght;  and  when 
bare  hills  come  into  view  they  are  richly  covered 
with  heather  and  with  great  masses  of  foxgloves,  very 
tall  and  slender,  waving  in  the  breeze.    It  is  a  beau- 


HIGHLANDS  OF  SCOTLAND 283 

tiful  road,  in  trees  and  stream  and  hedges  and  hills 
and  rocks,  and  the  very  bareness  which  alternates  with 
the  rich  greenery  adds  to  the  fascination  of  it.  And 
we  noticed  that,  as  if  forgetting  that  this  is  a  road 
up  into  the  Highlands,  there  are  great  numbers  of 
roses  in  bloom,  and  we  observed  in  particular  the  old- 
fashioned  yellow  rose  which  at  home  we  know  by  the 
name  of  the  Harrison  rose,  from  its  coming  from  the 
Harrisons  of  Virginia,  but  here  it  is  distinctively 
termed  the  "  Scotch  rose." 

Just  before  crossing  the  Tay  into  Dunkeld  we 
passed  through  a  wood  with  the  fascinating  name  of 
Birnam,  at  the  base  of  a  hill,  beside  a  little  town; 
and  it  is  indeed  the  very  Birnam  Wpod  of  Shake- 
speare's "  Macbeth."  Even  Dunsinane  (pronounced 
in  this  countryside,  in  defiance  of  Shakespeare, 
"  Dunsinnun,"  with  the  accent  on  the  second  sylla- 
ble) is  not  so  very  far  away,  it  being  only  some  ten 
miles  in  an  air  line,  but  quite  too  far  for  the  tree- 
carrying  episode.  Birnam  Wood  is  still  a  charming 
bit  of  woodland  which  is  reputed  to  have  been  a  great 
oak  forest ;  but  not  many  of  the  oaks  remain ;  in  fact, 
perhaps  not  more  than  one  or  two  of  the  mighty  mon- 
archs  of  the  past. 

At  Dunkeld  we  did  not  go  to  see  the  slender  sights 
of  the  place,  which  consist  of  a  park,  a  bit  of  an  old 
cathedral,  a  hermitage  and  a  considerable  number  of 
old  larch  trees,  although  we  should  have  been  per- 
mitted to  enter  and  see  all  this  on  payment  of  a  shill- 
ing apiece  to  an  agent  of  John  James  Hugh  Henry 
Stewart-Murray,  K.T.,  Duke  of  AthoU  and  Earl 
Strange.  We  were  inclined  to  do  this,  but  we  had 
been  paying  levies  to  so  many  dukes — including  the 
bill  at  our  hotel  in  London,  which  was  owned  by  a 
duke — that  we  had  to  draw  the  line  somewhere. 
(Down  in  Melrose  we  had  paid  sixpence  to  the  Duke 
of  Buccleuch  every  time  we  wanted  to  look  at  the 


284 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

abbey,  but  we  did  not  in  the  least  object  to  that,  for 
such  a  famous  place,  but  it  surprised  us  to  find  that 
any  of  the  townsfolk  in  Melrose  who  wished  to  visit 
the  graves  of  their  own  ancestors  in  the  abbey  grounds 
had  similarly  to  pay  this  price.) 

We  run  through  Dunkeld,  which  is  just  an  ordi- 
nary, pleasant  town,  and  the  road,  which  has  been 
practically  level  along  the  riverside,  now  begins  to 
climb,  and  as  it  does  it  becomes  more  and  more  beau- 
tiful. There  are  rocks  which  rise  abruptly,  alter- 
nating with  slopes  climbing  in  slow  dignity,  and  the 
road  becomes  superbly  wooded,  with  heights  in  the 
far  distance,  somber  and  dark  blue,  and  we  keep 
catching  glimpses  of  the  gleaming  water  far  below 
our  sinuous  road. 

We  have  found  that  there  is  a  "  Caledonia,  stern 
and  wild,"  but  we  have  also  learned  that  there  is  a 
Caledonia  which  is  the  very  reverse  of  stern  and  wild, 
and  the  combination  and  alternation  are  very  fas- 
cinating, indeed;  and  we  are  finding  to-day,  as  we 
go  on  farther  into  the  Highland  country,  that  the 
roads  average  quite  as  high  a  degree  of  excellence 
as  they  do  in  most  other  parts  not  only  of  Scotland, 
but  of  England.  We  had  anticipated  that  to  travel 
in  the  Highlands  would  mean  a  great  deal  of  rough, 
irregular  road;  and  there  is  really  some  of  that  kind 
of  road;  but,  on  the  other  hand,  one  may  travel  for 
days  through  the  most  beautiful  and  grand  High- 
land country  and  find  roads  that  are  practically  per- 
fection, for  they  are  mainly  built  through  mountain 
passes  or  by  the  sides  of  the  lochs  and  streams.  And 
many  Highland  roads  average  much  more  of  level- 
ness  than  do  the  roads  in  most  parts  of  supposedly 
level  England! 

We  found  it  somewhat  colder  in  Scotland  than  in 
England,  but  there  was  really  not  a  great  amount  of 
difference  in  the  countries  in  this  respect;  in  both 


HIGHLANDS  OF  SCOTLAND 285 

it  was  quite  necessary  to  have  overcoats  and  rugs 
with  us;  and  this  showed  us,  too,  that  it  would  have 
been  a  mistake  to  begin  our  tour  earlier  in  May  than 
we  did,  for  it  would  probably  have  been  too  cold  for 
real  comfort.  As  it  was,  we  never  had  a  particle  of 
real  discomfort  from  cold,  but  we  were  properly  pre- 
pared with  wraps. 

We  go  on  through  a  magnificent  beech  woods  rich 
with  splendid  fields  of  fern,  with  ever  the  river  glint- 
ing far  below  and  with  ever  the  heights  rising  splen- 
didly above  us,  and  then  the  road  goes  dropping 
down  to  the  very  level  of  the  river  and  continues  in 
wooded  beauty  through  not  only  the  characteristic 
beeches,  but  past  great  numbers  of  oaks,  birches, 
pines  and  rowans. 

The  Tay  swings  to  the  west,  but  we  are  to  run  for 
a  few  miles  to  the  northward  and  shall  then  come 
back  and  again  follow  its  course;  and  the  road  leads 
us  along  the  hurrying  Tummel,  and  far  up  here  we 
run  into  the  attractive,  up-to-date  mountain  resort  of 
Pitlochry,  and  here  the  gasoline  supply  is  replenished, 
and  we  anticipate  much  higher  prices  up  here  in  the 
Highlands,  but  are  surprised  to  find  that  it  is  only 
a  few  cents  more  a  gallon  than  elsewhere. 

The  entire  matter  of  handling  gasoline  is  another 
striking  example  of  the  power  of  trusts  in  Great 
Britain,  for  the  prices  are  practically  fixed  through- 
out the  country ;  gasoline  is  sold  in  two  grades.  No.  1 
and  No.  2,  but  it  is  a  mistake  to  use  the  second  grade, 
which  is  only  four  cents  a  gallon  cheaper;  the  better 
grade,  which  is  cleaner  and  also  gives  more  mileage, 
ranging  from  thirty-nine  to  forty-one  cents  a  gallon, 
or,  in  distant  places  like  Pitlochry,  about  forty-five 
cents.  The  English  gallon,  however,  is  a  little  larger 
than  the  American,  but  even  so  it  makes  gasoline  cost 
about  thirty-three  or  thirty-five  cents  a  gallon  by  our 
measure 


286 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

The  main  consideration  is,  however,  that  the 
roads  and  grades  are  so  excellent  throughout  Great 
Britain  that  they  not  only  save  expense  in  tires,  but 
also  save  materially  in  the  amount  of  gasoline  con- 
sumed. Gasoline  is  sold  in  sealed  cans,  which  are 
paid  for  if  for  any  reason  one  wishes  to  carry  a  can 
with  him,  but  the  cans  are  redeemable  at  the  fixed 
price  paid  for  them  at  any  one  of  the  myriad  gaso- 
line stations  at  Great  Britain;  and  it  is  really  an 
astonishingly  good  system. 

Beyond  Pitlochry  the  road  goes  steadily  climbing 
higher,  and  the  mountains  become  wilder  and  more 
grand ;  we  leave  the  car  at  the  Tummel  and  follow  a 
footpath  beside  another  stream  through  a  gorge  that 
every  moment  becomes  wilder  and  more  beautiful — 
and  this  is  the  famous  pass  of  Killiecrankie.  The 
stream  swirls  by  us  in  a  strange  brownness,  for  it  is 
brown  where  it  goes  smoothly  in  treacherous  ghdes, 
and  its  foam  is  brown  where  it  breaks  over  the  rocks, 
and  it  flows,  a  brown  and  crumpled  band,  between 
steep,  high  banks  that  are  thick  with  trees  and 
shrubs. 

On  a  high  bit  of  land  far  in  front  of  us,  but  for 
a  long  time  invisible,  is  the  spot  where  Dundee,  more 
famous  under  the  once-dreaded  name  of  Claverhouse, 
waited  for  the  English  soldiers  to  appear;  and  when 
we  approach  the  spot  we  climb  steeply  upward  and 
great  mountains  tower  superbly  immediately  behind 
his  position,  and  everywhere  are  splendid  masses  of 
pinkish  heather;  for  up  here  on  this  lofty  land  above 
the  pass  there  is  bareness  of  trees,  and  the  scene  be- 
comes one  of  grim  beauty  and  loneliness. 

How  vividly  the  picture  of  this  battle,  so  famous 
in  Scottish  history,  comes  to  us,  as  we  look  down 
into  the  beautiful  and  lonely  pass  hemmed  in  by 
these  great  mountains;  and  then  the  thought  comes 
of  how  old  America  is,  after  all! — for  at  the  time  this 


HIGHLANDS  OF  SCOTLAND 287 

battle  was  fought,  which  seems  so  long  ago,  the  Way- 
side Inn  was  standing,  and  used  as  an  inn,  just  out- 
side of  Boston! 

From  here  we  retrace  our  way  to  the  little  hamlet 
of  Ballinluig,  where  we  again  follow  up  the  valley 
of  the  Tay,  which  turns  here  to  the  westward  and 
opens  out  into  a  sweet,  broad  loveliness  with  splendid 
peaks  rising  in  the  central  distance. 

It  is  a  level  road  through  a  splendid  parklike  coun- 
try. Here  and  there  is  a  glimpse  of  a  mansion ;  here 
and  there  is  a  park  gate  and  an  avenue  leading  in  by 
long  lines  of  trees  and  indicating  a  mansion  hidden 
with  that  comfortable  skill  and  completeness  that 
mark  the  ability  of  the  British  to  hide  their  homes 
when  they  wish  to,  as  they  so  often  do.  Seldom  do 
we  see  a  humble  home.  It  is  a  region  that  is  remind- 
ful of  riches. 

The  broad  river  is  full  of  fish  that  must  not  be 
caught;  grouse  and  long- tailed  pheasants  that  must 
not  be  shot  fly  across  the  fields ;  rabbits  that  must  not 
be  killed  are  running  about  by  scores  and  scores  with 
impunity;  the  hillsides  and  fields  are  rich  with  trees 
that  indicate  shelter  and  firewood;  now  and  then  are 
seen  sleek  cattle;  and  once  a  liveried  servant  passes 
us,  leading  a  fine  pet  dog; — then  suddenly,  around 
a  bend,  we  come  upon  some  more  of  the  homeless 
folk  who  are  scattered  in  such  numbers  over  the  roads 
of  Great  Britain.  We  have  seen  homeless  men  be- 
fore; even  more  frequently  we  have  seen  men  and 
women,  and  once  in  a  while  a  man  and  woman  with 
one  or  two  children ;  but  this  time  we  meet  a  man  and 
a  woman  with  a  family  of  half  a  dozen.  They  travel, 
they  tell  us,  on  some  days  fourteen  or  fifteen  miles; 
their  two-wheeled  cart  is  for  the  littlest  or  the  weary ; 
the  man  is  a  laborer  and  so  is  his  eldest  boy,  and  the 
mother  also  works  when  she  gets  the  chance;  often, 
so  they  say  with  eager  faces,  they  are  able  to  stay  in  a 


288 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

place  for  two  or  three  days  at  a  time!  They  are 
brave,  these  people ;  they  are  not  of  the  trampers  who 
will  not  work,  nor  do  they  beg.  But  their  faces 
brighten  as  a  little  silver  is  given  to  the  children,  and 
we  leave  them  with  the  feeling  that  all  they  need  is  a 
chance. 

Across  the  water  we  see  little  Aberfeldy,  where 
a  double  row  of  Lombardy  poplars  stretches  com- 
pletely across  the  level  valley,  and  we  are  approach- 
ing Loch  Tay,  and  one  road  leads  to  the  left  along 
the  southern  side  of  the  loch  and  one  to  the  right 
along  the  northern,  and  we  choose  the  northern  side, 
and  on  we  go^  with  purple  mountains  rising  in  great 
peaks  in  the  distance  and  with  broad  slopes  mount- 
ing gradually  on  either  side. 

The  valley  broadens  into  a  great,  green,  treeless 
level  and  great  bare  heights  confrontingly  stand  in 
our  way,  and  we  drive  through  a  road,  unexpectedly 
tunneled  with  greenery,  and  are  at  tiny  Fortingal. 


At  the  Ro3iax  camp  near  Fortixgal 


A    HiGHLAXD    cottage    WITH    OXE    THATCHED    CHIMNEY 


By  the  ruins  of  Rob  Roy's  cottage 


On  the  r"6ad  beside  Loch  Lomond 


CHAPTER  XXVIII 

AMONG   THE  SCOTTISH   LAKES 

LITTLE  Fortingal,  tucked  against  its  great 
J  mountain-side,  is  so  clean  and  bright  and  new 
that  it  seems  almost  odd  to  associate  it  with 
age,  in  spite  of  the  thatched  roofs  above  the  pretty 
fronts  of  most  of  its  half  a  dozen  or  so  houses.  And 
it  is  another  example  of  the  many  places  that  possess 
unexpected  interest.  Nor  do  we  merely  mean  such 
things  as  its  ancient  bell,  which  is  known  to  be  six 
centuries  old,  nor  its  stone  font,  as  ancient  as  Chris- 
tianity in  Britain,  nor  even  that  in  the  little  grave- 
yard of  the  little,  modern  church  is  one  of  the  most 
ancient  of  trees;  a  yew-tree  estimated  by  naturalists 
to  be  three  thousand  years  old ;  a  tree  which,  though 
now  dying,  is  dying  slowly  and  each  year  continues 
to  put  forth  fresh  green  tips.  For  most  interesting 
of  all  is  the  legendary  connection  of  Fortingal  with 
Rome  and  with  Christianity. 

In  the  reign  of  Augustus  Caesar  ambassadors  were 
sent  to  many  a  distant  region  of  the  world  to  dis- 
cuss world-peace,  and,  so  ancient  stories  have  for  cen- 
turies told,  one  embassy  of  noble  Romans  who  took 
their  wives  with  them  for  the  pleasant  jaunt  in  dis- 
tant regions,  went  to  Scotland,  and  finding  that  the 
king,  Metallanus,  was  absent  hunting  in  the  north, 
they  followed  him  and  found  him  on  Loch  Tay;  and 
here,  so  the  story  has  it,  a  son  was  born  to  the  wife 
of  one  of  the  ambassadors — a  son  who  was  to  grow 
up  and  have  a  great  deal  to  do  with  the  Christian  Era, 
which  began  when  the  old  yew-tree  here  was  one 


290 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

thousand  years  old ;  for  this  child  of  a  distant  Roman 
was  Pontius  Pilate. 

Such  a  story  cannot,  of  course,  be  proven.  But 
likewise  it  cannot  be  denied.  We  set  it  down  as  an 
interesting  centuries-old  legend.  But  it  certainly  is 
very  curious  to  think  of  the  possibility  of  Pilate  hav- 
ing opened  his  eyes  upon  the  world  here  beside  the 
Tay,  with  these  brooding  mountains  rising  so  steep 
and  high  and  bare. 

A  little  beyond  Fortingal  is  the  site  of  an  ancient 
Roman  camp — what  wonderful  people  those  Romans 
were,  to  come  with  their  camps  and  their  legions  so 
far  up  here  as  these  Scotch  mountains  I — and  trenches 
and  pretorium  are  still  clearly  marked,  and  flowers 
in  great  variety  of  kind  and  color  grow  all  over  the 
field.  But  this  camp  has  nothing  to  do  with  the 
Pilate  legend,  as  it  is  in  date  some  two  hundred  years 
later  than  that  time. 

We  continue  along  the  river  and  in  a  few  miles 
come  to  where  it  widens  into  a  loch;  a  beautiful 
stretch  of  water,  nestling  among  mountains;  a  long 
and  sinuous  lake  twisting  on  among  the  heights  for 
miles ;  and  we  run  beside  it  with  ever-changing  views 
of  beauty  and  of  grandeur. 

At  length,  toward  the  end  of  the  lake,  we  see 
mountains  grouped  formidably  in  our  path,  and  we 
pass  cottages  with  not  only  thatched  roofs,  but  even 
with  the  very  chimneys  thatched! — and  the  smoke 
coming  out  shows  that  these  ancient  thatched  chim- 
neys are  actually  used!  And  the  road  makes  final 
twists  and  turns  and  deviousnesses  of  beauty,  and  we 
stop  for  the  night,  for  we  find  a  little  inn  here  at 
the  head  of  the  lake.  It  is  late,  but  it  does  not  seem 
so,  for  it  is  still  daylight,  and  after  dinner  we  start 
out  for  a  daylight  stroll,  although  it  is  ten  o'clock  at 
night;  and  at  eleven  o'clock  it  is  still  light,  but  be- 
ginning to  darken. 


AMONG  THE  SCOTTISH  LAKES  291 

Dawn  comes  early  here ;  but,  although  the  inn  peo- 
ple went  to  bed  last  night  in  daylight,  while  we  were 
out  walking,  there  is  no  thought  of  breakfast  before 
the  customary  British  half-past  eight. 

Although  there  are  not  so  many  wayside  flowers 
hereabouts,  the  village  gardens  are  a  revel  of  glory 
with  honeysuckle,  larkspurs,  roses  and  orange  lilies. 
We  leave  Loch  Tay  through  the  little  village  of 
Killin,  over  a  bridge  across  the  Dochart,  and  the 
water  of  the  narrow  river  goes  surging  over  ledges 
of  rocks,  and  pine  trees  hang  pictorially  over  the  wa- 
ter, and  a  line  of  white  cottages,  set  flush  with  the 
road,  add  to  the  view,  and  marvelously  beautiful 
mountains  rise  close  at  hand,  and  as  we  leave  we  look 
back  in  admiration  at  this  superb  line  of  heights ;  and 
we  go  on  by  the  side  of  the  river,  which  has  become 
suddenly  quiet  and  peaceful  above  the  rocks,  and  in 
front  of  us  rise  other  splendid  towering  heights.  No- 
where on  the  journey  thus  far  have  we  been  in  such 
a  lovely  spot,  and  it  is  pleasant  to  think  that  we  are  in 
such  splendid  beauty  on  the  Fourth  of  July! 

Far  in  the  distance  rises  Ben  More,  lofty  and  som- 
ber and  proud  and  with  snow-touched  summit.  We 
go  on  through  a  region  of  wild,  bare,  treeless  gran- 
deur ;  and  we  see  great  horned  Highland  cattle  star- 
ing at  us  from  unf enced  fields,  and  once  in  a  while  we 
come  to  a  blackened  stone  cottage  with  thatched  roof 
and  again  with  one  of  those  surprising  thatched 
chimneys,  and  one  cottager,  who  asks  us  in,  shows 
us  that  his  thatch-topped  chimney  is  actually  lined 
with  wood.  The  only  possible  explanation  that  oc- 
curs to  us  of  how  these  buildings  escape  fire  for  gen- 
erations is  that  this  is  a  peat-burning  country;  but 
even  that  does  not  do  away  with  the  danger  and  the 
wonder  of  it. 

At  length  we  come  to  the  foot  of  towering  Ben 
More,  and  on  a  bit  of  level  not  far  above  the  road 


292 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

there  still  stands,  in  absolute  solitude,  a  fragment  of 
stone  cottage;  a  gable  end,  a  couple  of  rude  fire- 
places, a  trifle  of  ruined  wall ;  and  the  interior  of  the 
cottage  is  one  solid  mass  of  nettles.  In  this  cottage 
lived  for  a  time  the  famous  Rob  Roy  MacGregor, 
head  of  a  ferociously  proscribed  and  persecuted  clan, 
and  he  fled  from  here  and  his  cottage  was  burned, 
but  the  scattered  inhabitants  still  know  it  as  Rob 
Roy's  home.  A  pair  of  curlews  fly  up  from  their  nest 
within  it  as  we  approach  and  scream  wildly  over  our 
heads;  a  tiny  mountain  brook  ripples  close  by;  and 
all  else  is  great,  bleak  immensity. 

Here  the  solitude  and  the  beauty  so  tempt  us  that 
we  lie  down  for  a  while  in  the  bright  sun  on  the  soft, 
springy,  fragrant  heather  and  look  up  at  the  tall 
mountains  rising  in  the  sky  and  off  at  the  sweeping 
views;  but  soon  we  are  on  our  way  again,  and  now 
it  is  through  sweetness  as  well  as  grandeur,  and  we 
come  to  Crianlarich,  a  little  village  and  railroad  sta- 
tion set  here  as  if  to  show  that  a  place  may  be  unat- 
tractive even  in  the  midst  of  grandeur  and  beauty. 
From  here  the  road  forks,  one  branch  going  to  the 
westward  and  the  other  south  toward  Loch  Lomond, 
and  we  chose  the  southern  branch,  and  it  leads  us  be- 
tween splendid  heights  for  miles  and  miles,  with 
slopes  and  valleys  rich  with  heather  and  with  tufts 
of  yellow  gorse,  and  with  little  rivulets  rushing  wildly 
down  the  mountainsides  and  often  tumbling  in  white, 
dashing  waterfalls  that  make  foamy  streaks  among 
the  rocks  and  heather — ^it  is  a  wonderfully  beautiful 
road,  and  never  could  there  be  finer,  cleaner  and  more 
bracing  air. 

We  pass  a  field  covered  thick  with  white  sea- 
gulls, although  we  are  far  from  the  sea;  and  in  a 
little  while  Loch  Lomond  comes  into  view,  a  beauti- 
ful length  of  water  lying  superbly  among  superb 
mountains. 


AMONG  THE  SCOTTISH  LAKES  293 

We  stop  at  Ardlui,  at  the  head  of  the  lake,  where 
there  is  a  good  hotel,  and  we  have  luncheon  here  and 
leave  the  car  in  the  garage  and  go  aboard  a  little 
steamer — not  large  enough  for  a  motor  itself,  and 
so  no  motors  can  cross  Loch  Lomond— and  we  take 
a  ride  on  the  lake,  and  a  delightful  and  superb  ride 
it  is,  with  the  great  heights  holding  the  winding  wa- 
ter in  their  hollow.  We  get  off  at  Inversnaid,  and 
here  we  are  in  the  thick  of  Highland  tourist  travel,  in 
contrast  to  the  miles  of  lonely  mountain  road  over 
which  we  have  just  come,  and  here  we  take  one  of 
several  coaches  filling  up  to  drive  to  Loch  Katrine, 
five  miles  away;  a  little  lake  of  sheer  loveliness,  all 
greens  and  blues  and  purples  in  the  midst  of  its 
beautiful  heather-covered  mountains. 

It  makes  a  delightful  interlude,  this  boating  and 
coaching  to  a  place  beautiful  in  itself  and  noteworthy 
as  the  scene  of  "  The  Lady  of  the  Lake";  and  we 
realize,  too,  one  of  the  changes  that  have  come  with 
motor  cars,  and  that  is,  that  in  the  past  coaches  with 
their  scarlet-coated  drivers  have  stood  for  luxury  and 
charm  of  travel,  but  that  now  they  seem  very  slow 
even  for  going  through  a  beautiful  country,  and  that 
one  misses  not  only  the  swiftness  of  the  motor  car 
but  its  smoothness  and  ease. 

We  returned  to  Inversnaid,  a  place  curiously  Swiss 
in  aspect,  with  its  mountain  hotel  and  thronging  tour- 
ists, and  we  had  tea  there,  with  the  bright,  gossipy, 
eager,  largely  American  throng;  and  it  was  pleasant 
to  meet  pleasant  Americans  on  the  Fourth.  Very 
few  of  either  the  English  or  Americans  were  going 
to  the  north  of  the  lake,  as  this  is  an  hour's  stopping- 
point  almost  altogether  for  travelers  on  rapid  trips 
between  Glasgow  and  Edinburgh. 

We  returned  to  Ardlui,  and  the  car  was  taken 
from  the  garage,  and  we  turned  our  faces  south- 
ward for  a  drive  of  twenty-five  miles  along  the  en- 


294 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

tire  length  of  Loch  Lomond,  the  largest  of  British 
lakes. 

That  ride  remains  in  our  memory  as  one  of  the 
supreme  impressions  of  the  tour.  We  found,  almost 
from  the  beginning  of  it,  that,  as  Loch  Katrine  is  a 
little  lake  of  supreme  loveliness,  so  Loch  Lomond  is 
a  large  lake  of  supreme  loveliness ;  and  the  loveliness 
is  ever  changing  in  character. 

This  road  down  the  western  side  of  the  lake — there 
is  no  road  down  the  other  side — is  in  itself  a  perfect 
piece  of  road-making,  cut  as  it  is  out  of  the  very  rock, 
just  above  the  surface  of  the  water,  so  that  always 
the  water  goes  shimmering  away  from  our  very 
wheels  or  else  is  close  at  hand  and  seen  through  wav- 
ing bracken  or  shrubs,  and  always  great  heights  go 
towering,  with  their  rocks  and  solitudes,  immediately 
from  our  side,  and  always,  across  the  widening  and 
narrowing  lake,  is  another  hne  of  splendid  moun- 
tains. Ben  Lomond  (a  name  vaguely  rich  in  the 
vaguest  of  memories)  rises  majestically,  with  mist 
hovering  vaguely  around  its  summit,  and  our  road 
goes  on,  with  infinite  roundings  and  bendings  which 
follow  the  bendings  and  windings  of  the  shore  as  it 
curves  at  the  foot  of  the  mountains ;  and  once  it  bends 
with  a  bending  beach  away,  and  once — and  it  seems 
more  impressive  than  as  if  this  had  happened  many 
times — a  splendid  wild  bird,  huge  and  brown,  with 
feathered  feet  (it  seemed  to  fit  the  name  of  ptarmi- 
gan, but  perhaps  it  was  not  one),  mounted  swiftly 
from  the  waterside  in  a  long-slanting  flight  as  if  aim- 
ing at  one  of  the  summits.  It  was  typical  of  the 
wild  fascination  of  it  all. 

It  is  a  ride  of  lonely  grandeur,  of  inexhaustible 
beauty;  rarely  is  there  a  house  of  any  sort  and  seldom 
do  we  even  pass  a  motor  car  and  never  a  horse;  and 
toward  the  end  the  lake  goes  broadening  out  in  a  de- 
lightful conglomeration  of  water  and  dotted  islands. 


AMONG  THE  SCOTTISH  LAKES  295 

with  the  great  mountains  sinking  into  finely  rounded 
hills. 

From  here  we  go  southward  into  a  region  sprin- 
kled with  beautiful  private  estates,  and  thus  on 
through  a  lowland  country  to  Dumbarton,  still 
frowned  over  by  its  great  Clyde-set  castled  rock.  It 
is  a  crowded  city,  and  gives  an  impression  of  uneasy 
discomfort.  It  was  Saturday  evening,  and  crowds, 
as  is  usual  in  Britain,  were  thronging  roadway  and 
sidewalk  alike;  and  we  noticed  quite  a  sprinkling  of 
white-coated  soldiers  who  were  both  in  tartans  and 
intoxicated — ^that  is,  they  were  all  in  tartans  and 
quite  a  number  were  intoxicated. 

It  was  still  so  light  and  Dumbarton  was  so  unat- 
tractive that  we  ran  on  to  Glasgow,  reaching  that  city 
after  nine  o'clock  through  a  long  manufacturing  and 
ship-building  series  of  suburbs.  We  noticed,  as  we 
approached  the  city,  by  far  the  largest  manufactur- 
ing establishment  we  had  seen  anywhere  in  Great 
Britain,  and  not  until  we  had  commented  on  this  fact 
did  we  see  in  the  twilight  that  it  had  on  it  the  name 
of  an  American  sewing  machine! 

Although  it  was  late,  the  Glasgow  streets  were 
crowded  with  humming,  buzzing,  moving  masses  of 
people.  There  were  street  preachers;  there  were 
young  men  singing  and  dancing;  there  was  a  great 
deal  of  drinking;  there  were  many  women  carrying 
babies;  there  were  young  men  and  their  sweethearts 
going  into  cheap  and  respectable  little  restaurants; 
there  were  numerous  drunken  men;  and  the  police- 
men, of  whom  there  were  many  to  be  seen,  went 
always  in  pairs  or  even  three  together,  which  grimly 
showed  what  dangers  were  seething  beneath  the 
surface. 

There  were  corporation-owned  tram-cars,  double- 
deckers,  and  it  amused  us  hugely  to  notice  on  their 
fronts  such  signs  as  "  Gang  warily  "  and  "  Always 


296 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAUST 

Face  Forward :  Proverbs  3d  Chapter,  23d  Verse  " — 
and  the  Scotch,  supposedly  a  Bible-reading  folk,  are 
expected  to  know  that  this  means :  "  Then  shalt  thou 
walk  in  thy  way  safely,  and  thy  foot  shall  not  stum- 
ble." We  looked  this  up  ourselves  in  the  Bible  sup- 
plied to  each  room  in  the  hotel,  for,  though  they 
expect  their  own  people  to  know  the  Bible,  perhaps 
they  do  not  expect  that  knowledge  from  visitors. 

As  we  motored  about  the  city  the  next  morning, 
we  found  ourselves  forced  most  carefully  to  follow 
the  "  gang  warily  "  admonition,  for  the  streets  were 
littered  with  fragments  of  broken  bottles ;  a  Sunday- 
morning  comment  on  a  Glasgow  Saturday  night. 
But  the  city  distinctly  gives  the  impression  of  a  pros- 
perous and  busy  place. 

There  are  extensive  university  buildings  and  art 
galleries,  which  do  not  particularly  attract  in  appear- 
ance; and  we  took  a  look  at  the  altered  and  "re- 
stored "  cathedral,  which  is  a  striking  example  of 
what  can  be  done  if  a  city  is  determined  to  take  the 
beauty  from  an  old  building;  for  there  is  now  such 
a  mixture  of  poor  architecture  showing  as  makes  the 
name  of  the  patron  saint,  St.  Mungo,  seem  vaguely 
to  fit  the  general  aspect. 

Without  feeling  frivolous,  as  all  Glasgow  was  go- 
ing to  church,  it  did  mildly  amuse  us  to  read  a  sign, 
"  Teeth  stopped  and  scaled  " ;  and  of  course  we  mo- 
tored to  the  waterside  and  along  by  the  wharves  and 
the  shipbuilding  yards,  and  then,  in  a  gray  forenoon, 
with  a  drizzly  rain  threatening  but  not  fulfilling  its 
threat,  we  were  across  the  Clyde  and  into  a  bold,  bare, 
rolling,  morasslike,  boggy,  featureless  country  over 
which  it  was  a  pleasure  to  go  quickly;  and  perhaps 
the  overcast  sky  did  add  to  the  effect  of  dreariness. 

At  one  spot  we  did  stop,  however,  and  this  was 
because,  off  in  a  lonely  bog,  or  moss  as  it  would  here 
be  called,  stood  a  solitary  monument  which  demanded 


AMONG  THE  SCOTTISH  LAKES  297 

investigation.  By  bog-trotting  warily  the  monument 
was  reached  with  dry  feet,  but  it  was  only  to  find  that 
the  shaft  had  been  raised  to  the  memory  of  the  wife 
of  a  member  of  Parliament  who  had  wished  for  burial 
here;  and  as  this  was  stated  on  the  monument,  in- 
eluding  the  fact  of  the  husband's  being  a  Parliament 
man,  it  was  not  unkind  to  think  that  the  wife  had 
chosen  loneliness  even  in  death  rather  than  speeches. 
By  this  road  we  reached  Kilmarnock  and  found  not 
a  willow  in  the  place.  But  we  did  find  a  most  excel- 
lent Sunday-noon  dinner,  just  as  ready  as  if  we  had 
ordered  it  for  that  particular  time. 

In  the  dozen  miles  from  Kilmarnock  to  Ayr  the 
country  changes  its  uninteresting  character  and  be- 
comes delightful,  and  the  roadbed  itself,  which  has 
been  not  quite  up  to  the  average,  becomes  smooth 
and  excellent;  and  there  are  rich  farms  with  large 
clusters  of  well-kept  farm  buildings  around  the  farm- 
houses, and  there  are  great  pastures  dotted  with  white 
and  brown-red  cattle,  beasts  with  very  large  faces, 
which  we  take  to  be  the  famous  Ayrshires;  and  by 
fair  woodland  and  hedges  and  now  and  then  a  shin- 
ing glimpse  of  the  sea  we  come  to  Ayr. 


CHAPTER  XXIX 

BY  ATTON  WATER  AND  GRETNA  GREEN 

AYR  itself  is  a  plain  and  ordinary  town,  through 
which  we  pass  without  stopping,  and  soon  we 
'enter  a  superb  avenue  of  old  beeches  with 
branches  so  thickly  crossing  and  interlacing  overhead 
as  distinctly  to  give  a  twilight  effect  to  the  road  even 
in  mid-day,  and  as  Tarn  o'  Shanter  is  supposed  to 
have  gone  through  this  road  on  his  famous  fateful 
night,  it  is  small  wonder  that  he  was  ready  for 
experiences. 

Emerging  from  this  shaded  stretch,  we  are  quickly 
in  the  little  village  of  AUoway,  where  Burns  was 
born,  and  where  the  cottage  itself  is  still  standing; 
a  plain,  humble  little  place  of  plastered  clay  with  a 
thatched  roof;  now  newly  plastered  and  revamped, 
and  piously  closed  for  Sunday.  How  this  would  have 
amused  Burns! 

But  beyond  being  interested  in  seeing  this  humble 
place  and  thereby  understanding  how  very  far  Burns 
mounted  to  his  fame,  we  are  interested  in  him  en- 
tirely in  his  out-of-door  aspect,  for  the  only  Burns 
of  importance  is  the  out-of-door  Burns.  Near  his 
home  is  the  ruined  little  Alloway  Kirk,  its  crumbling 
walls  so  hung  with  ivy  and  jessamine,  so  moldering 
in  its  heavy  green  shade,  and  with  its  close-packed  old 
gravestones  so  covered  thick  with  moss,  as  to  seem 
a  ghostly  place  even  in  daylight  and  to  be  worthy  of 
better  ghosts  than  his  unimpressive  witches.  But 
almost  immediately  beyond  this  we  come  upon  one  of 
the  places  that  stand  for  the  greatness  of  Burns, 
for  here  we  come  to  the  Doon. 

298 


BY  AFTON  WATER 299 

The  greatness  of  Burns  is  in  his  songs;  from  his 
boyhood  he  conned  and  crooned  the  ancient  and  al- 
most forgotten  tunes  of  Scotland  and  his  passionate 
love  for  those  wild,  sweet  airs  was  the  sole  sincerity 
of  his  life.  He  had  genius  for  writing  songs  and  he 
wrote  them  to  hit  to  those  vanishing  airs  of  the  past. 
He  has  so  set  forth  such  things  as  the  banks  and  braes 
of  bonnie  Doon,  and  the  gently-flowing  Afton,  as 
to  make  them  loved  and  remembered  forever  by  the 
world.  And  so  it  was  beside  the  Doon  and  the  Afton 
that  we  looked  for  Burns. 

The  Doon  is  really  so  lovely !  And  we  like  Burns 
the  better  that  he  immortalized  a  stream  that  is  so 
near  the  bare  baldness  of  his  birthplace  and  village. 
An  old  stone  bridge  arches  itself  across  the  water, 
and  beneath  the  bridge  goes  softly  rippling  the  stream 
into  whose  name  he  has  forever  put  music.  It  is  a 
lovely  spot,  and  trees  grow  thickly  and  lean  far  for- 
ward over  the  very  water  itself.  The  fair-blooming 
banks  of  the  poet's  time  are  just  as  fair  to-day;  and 
that  one  side  of  the  river,  immediately  below  the 
bridge,  is  a  park,  and  that  it  is  a  favorite  Sunday- 
afternoon  resort  for  the  people  of  Ayr,  has  not  taken 
away  the  delicate  beauty  of  the  scene. 

From  the  banks  of  the  Doon  we  ran  back  two  or 
three  miles  to  much-monumented  Ayr  and,  without 
going  through  the  center  of  the  town,  struck  to  the 
eastward  by  a  fine  road  through  a  charming  land,  a 
rich  grazing  country,  with  farm  buildings  clustered 
prosperously.  On  the  whole,  this  is  the  most  level 
countryside  that  we  have  found  in  Scotland,  but 
even  this  is  far  from  being  really  level,  for  it  is  softly 
rolling  and  now  and  again  offers  the  unexpectedness 
of  a  really  widespread  view  of  miles,  to  low  hills  dim 
in  the  distant  haze.  A  drizzle  comes  on,  but  soon 
stops,  and  we  go  on  with  a  cold  wind  and  under  a 
sunless  sky,  but  still  with  a  sense  of  going  through 


300 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

a  cheerful  country;  and  again  and  again  there  is  the 
effect  of  cottages  whitewashed  to  brilliancy  set  in  the 
midst  of  very  green  fields. 

Thus  we  come  in  sixteen  miles  to  Cumnock,  and 
here  we  swing  southeast  and  in  five  miles  more  reach 
New  Cumnock,  and  at  New  Cumnock  is  the  Afton, 
for  it  flows  through  the  edge  of  the  town. 

But  we  do  not  need  to  remember  the  Afton  by  its 
village  aspect;  for  beside  the  stream  at  the  village 
edge  we  met  the  delightful  wife  of  the  village  doctor, 
and  she  loved  the  Afton,  flowing  as  it  did  past  her 
own  dooryard,  and  she  was  delightedly  interested  to 
find  that  her  Afton  was  famous — we  were  the  only 
strangers  she  had  ever  heard  of  who  had  sought  for 
the  Afton — and,  understanding  that  we  wanted  to 
see  it  in  more  than  village  surroundings,  she  pointed 
out  a  road  by  which  we  could  come  upon  its  course 
in  perfect  wildness ;  and  two  or  three  miles  from  the 
village  we  had  the  joy  of  discovering  the  river  where 
it  looked  as  it  looked  when  Burns  sang  of  it. 

Here  Afton  Water  is  a  murmuring  stream  of  love- 
liness, flowing  through  a  tiny  glen  thick-sheltered 
with  close-growing  trees  and  flowing  out  from  among 
bare-topped  rounding  hills.  It  is  a  stream  of  alter- 
nate smoothness  and  rock-filled  shallows,  but  it  is 
always  a  stream  of  gentleness.  Its  pleasant  banks, 
its  green  valley,  even  the  wild-whistling  blackbirds  in 
their  thorny  den — here  it  is  just  as  Burns  saw  it;  and 
we  know  how  beautifully  a  little  earlier  in  the  spring 
the  poet's  primroses  were  blossoming  wild  in  these 
woodlands.  It  is  a  place  to  rest  by;  and  never  was 
the  spirit  of  a  spot  more  adequately  expressed  than 
by  the  words  of  "  Sweet  Afton."  Nowhere  in  Scot- 
land have  we  seen  the  grass  so  long,  the  clover  so 
thick,  the  fields  more  beautiful  with  wild  flowers  or 
more  beautifully  bordered  by  trees. 

Leaving  New  Cumnock  and  the  vale  of  Afton  be- 


!BY  AFTON  WATER 301 

hind  us,  we  strike  into  the  valley  of  the  river  Nith, 
and  follow  a  winding  road  that  follows  the  broad 
and  pleasant  windings  of  the  stream.  In  a  few  miles 
we  come  to  Sanquhar,  a  plain  and  ordinary  town,  but 
a  monument  which  stands  where  once  stood  the  town 
cross  commemorates  events  that  make  this  ordinary- 
seeming  place  one  of  brave  importance  to  the  Scotch 
themselves ;  for  this  town  is  in  the  heart  of  the  region 
that  was  the  center  of  the  deadly  religious  persecu- 
tion of  the  Covenanters  not  much  over  two  centuries 
ago,  and  the  monument  keeps  in  mind  that  two  dif- 
ferent declarations  were  published  here,  in  "  the  kill- 
ing time,"  as  the  inscription,  with  grim  simplicity, 
has  it. 

And  unexpectedly,  after  passing  through  this  now 
humdrum  place,  there  comes  into  sight,  not  far 
away,  the  ruin  of  a  stately  castle  built  in  the  long 
ago  to  watch  here  in  Nithdale;  and  we  do  not  need 
to  know  its  history;  it  is  enough  that  it  rises  up  for 
us  out  of  the  distant  past  and  sinks  vaguely  into  the 
past  again. 

By  an  attractive  road  we  continue  down  the  val- 
ley, which  holds  and  increases  its  pleasant  charm  as 
it  broadens  gently  in  its  mildly  twisting  course.  It 
was  a  run  of  a  dozen  miles  or  more  from  gloomy 
Sanquhar  to  Thornhill,  where  we  planned  to  spend 
the  night;  a  dozen  miles  of  picturesque  motoring  be- 
side the  Nith  as  it  went  wandering  onward  with  a 
sort  of  careless  grace.  The  ever-changing  landscape 
was  ever  sweet  in  its  pictorially  pastoral  attractive- 
ness. The  mellowness  of  late  afternoon  lay  over  the 
hushed  valley.  The  air  came  mild  and  sweet.  In 
all,  Nithdale  showed  itself  to  us  as  one  of  the  most 
softly  beautiful  valleys  in  Great  Britain. 

Approaching  Thornhill,  we  turned  aside  before 
entering  the  village,  to  run  through  an  estate  of  the 
Duke  of  Buccleuch.     It  is  not  his  most  important 


302 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

place;  he  may  possibly  come  here  for  a  couple  of 
months  in  the  shooting  season;  he  owns  here,  as  we 
are  told,  a  trifle  of  land  some  twenty-six  miles  long 
and  from  four  to  six  miles  wide,  including  of  course 
the  very  river  itself  and  any  houses  or  villages  that 
may  happen  to  come  within  this  scope;  and  he  freely 
permits  strangers  to  drive  for  miles  through  even  this 
private  park,  and  we  take  a  look  at  the  huge  and 
costly  pile,  standing  in  square  and  tower-cornered 
impressiveness,  built  two  centuries  ago  by  a  preced- 
ing ducal  owner;  and  we  find  it  not  particularly  fine 
in  spite  of  its  dignity  of  size  and  the  great  name  of 
its  designer,  Inigo  Jones. 

We  were  agreeably  astonished,  in  little  Thornhill, 
far  up  there  in  an  out-of-the-way  and  very  sparsely 
settled  corner  of  the  world,  to  find  a  delightful  and 
picturesquely  furnished  inn,  equipped  with  gas  and 
telegraph  and  telephone  and  plumbing. 

They  gave  us  French  bread  for  dinner  and  even  a 
wood-pigeon  pasty.  And  this  pasty  was  out  of  the 
land  of  romance — it  was  baked  in  a  rectangular  deep 
dish  two  feet  long  and  more  than  a  foot  in  width 
and  it  seemed  as  if  there  were  as  many  wood  pigeons 
in  its  depths  as  there  were  in  the  great  rhyme-famous 
pie  of  the  blackbirds;  and  the  explanation  of  all  this 
is  that  this  is  a  shooting  district  and  that  all  those 
who  secure  the  privilege  to  shoot  are  not  house- 
guests  of  the  duke,  so  that  a  good  inn  has  a  natural 
place  here. 

In  the  morning,  this  entire  region  being  one  of 
song  inspiration,  we  could  not  go  southward  without 
first  going  to  the  home  of  one  in  honor  of  whose 
charms  was  composed  a  song  so  sweet  and  so  famous 
that  all  the  world  knows  her  name;  for  the  name  is 
Annie  Laurie. 

So  we  took  a  side  road  leading  off  to  Maxwellton; 
which  is  not  at  all  the  Maxwelltown  near  Dumfries, 


BY  AFTON  WATER 303 

some  fifteen  miles  to  the  southward;  and  the  road 
led  for  five  miles  through  the  heart  of  a  delightful 
region  to  Maxwellton  House;  a  fine  old  place,  long 
ago  burned  and  partly  rebuilt;  a  largish  white  house 
of  many  gables,  looking  down  into  a  charmingly 
grassed  and  wooded  and  flowered  swale. 

Within  the  house  the  very  room  of  Annie  Laurie 
is  still  preserved,  and  among  the  old  and  interest- 
ing portraits  of  admirals  and  generals  of  the  Laurie 
family,  on  the  walls  of  this  older  portion  of  the  house, 
is  a  two-centuries-old  painting  which  is  supposed  to 
be  that  of  Annie  Laurie  herself,  in  all  the  sweetness 
of  her  beauty.  We  were  delightfully  received  here. 
The  master  of  the  house,  a  Laurie,  is  ninety-two 
years  old,  but  he  sent  word  to  show  us  everything, 
with  his  regrets  that  his  blindness  made  it  impossi- 
ble to  receive  us  in  person. — And  when  his  end  comes 
Death  will  have  a  gentleman  for  a  companion. 

We  motored  about  this  immediate  country  for 
quite  a  number  of  miles,  for  the  song  is  right  in  its 
declaration  that  Maxwellton's  braes  are  bonnie.  It 
is  everywhere  a  charming  neighborhood,  and  even  the 
little  village  of  Moniave,  set  among  the  hills  not  far 
away,  has  a  quaint,  flower-bedecked,  thrifty,  little 
charm  of  its  own;  this  Moniave  being  the  village  of 
the  ugly  named  farm  of  Craigenputtock,  up  a  very 
rough  stone  road,  where  Carlyle  for  a  time  lived  and 
where  our  own  Emerson  visited  him  and  where  Jane 
Welsh  Carlyle  lamented  for  the  world  the  unpleas- 
antness of  it  all.  It  is  curious  thus  to  notice  what 
differences  come  from  different  attitudes  of  mind  and 
different  possibilities  of  enjoyment,  and  that  braes 
may  be  bonnie  or  the  reverse,  according  to  the  indi- 
vidual; and  in  all  of  our  journeying  we  have  seldom 
been  more  pleased  than  in  finding,  in  this  thoroughly 
delightful  region,  the  home  and  the  room  and  the 
portrait  of  the  heroine  of  one  of  the  sweetest  of  old 


304 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

songs,  and  also  in  finding  that  it  is  under  her  own 
name  that  Annie  Laurie  is  immortalized  and  that 
her  memory  is  still  vividly  cherished  here. 

We  had  hoped,  when  at  Afton  Water,  to  see  the 
"  green-crested  lapwing,"  because  to  Burns  it  meant 
part  of  this  countryside,  and  we  actually  see  it  here 
at  Maxwellton  in  the  same  general  region ;  a  slender- 
legged  bird,  high  crested  and  bluey-gray  in  general 
color,  rising  from  the  clipped  laurestines  of  Maxwell- 
ton  House. 

But  even  a  charming  region  like  this  could  not 
continue  to  hold  us,  and  we  took  up  our  journey 
southward.  There  are  fine  private  estates  hereabouts ; 
it  is  all  a  parklike  country  even  when  it  is  but  rich 
pasture  land,  with  Ayrshire  cattle  picturesquely 
speckling  the  fields;  but  in  a  few  miles  after  regain- 
ing the  main  road  we  are  in  a  barer  region,  and  we 
turn  up  a  narrow  lane  for  some  two  miles  and  come 
to  the  ruined  tower  of  Lag,  dismally  notorious  on 
account  of  Covenanting  cruelties  and  famous  through 
being  the  scene  of  "  Wandering  Willie's  Tale  " ;  that 
grim  bit  out  of  Scott's  imagination  which  seems  to 
have  been  suggestive  of  Hawthorne's  grim  story  of 
"  Young  Goodman  Brown."  The  tower  is  a  stone 
shell  standing  on  a  little  knoll  above  a  farmstead,  and 
is  entirely  hidden  by  dark  trees. 

Again  we  go  motoring  southward,  still  following 
the  river  Nith,  and  come  to  the  old  town  of  Dum- 
fries; a  busy  but  rather  ordinary  sort  of  place;  and 
over  in  a  narrow  street  in  the  poorer  quarter  of  the 
town  is  the  depressing  little  house  where  Burns  spent 
his  last  years.  His  was  not  much  of  a  rise  in  worldly 
circumstance;  his  life  reached  from  one  little  cottage 
to  another  little  cottage  strangely  like  it;  it  was  but 
a  span  from  poverty  to  poverty.  But  between  those 
cottages  he  conquered  the  world. 

Burns  is  buried  near  this  Dumfries  cottage  in  a 


OBY  AFTON  WATER 305 

crowded  churchyard  surrounded  close  by  humble 
homes,  and  in  a  part  of  the  graveyard  where  the 
stones  are  proudly  marked  "  mason,"  "  spirit  mer- 
chant," "baker,"  "carpenter"  and  so  on;  and  there 
has  been  erected  for  him  there  a  tomb  that  is  large 
and  ornate. 

From  Dumfries  we  ran  by  a  cross  road,  through 
pleasant  country,  toward  the  eastward,  and  just  as 
we  were  saying  to  ourselves  that  this  was  an  en- 
tirely featureless  tract  we  came  to  the  stern  ruin  of 
an  ancient  castle — we  did  not  stop  to  find  what  it  was 
— and  the  road  opened  upon  a  sweeping  view,  with 
mountains  standing  high  in  the  distance,  and  we  came 
to  an  agreeable  little  lake  with  an  agreeable  little 
town  beside  it,  whose  people  had  recently  put  up 
both  a  statue  of  Bruce  and  a  public  fountain;  and 
it  was  a  pleasure  to  see  that  a  community  could  be 
at  the  same  time  so  practical  as  to  build  a  fountain 
and  so  sentimental  as  to  put  up  a  statue  to  a  hero  of 
six  centuries  ago. 

We  reach  Lockerbie  and  here  turn  southward  and 
in  a  few  miles  are  in  Ecclef echan,  a  bare  little  town 
of  bare  little  stone  houses  without  dooryards.  In 
one  of  the  few  streets  a  dirty  little  stream  runs  by 
the  side  of  the  road,  as  far  as  possible  a  contrast  to 
what  a  little  Scotch  stream  may  be,  and  looking  across 
this  is  the  bare,  dirty-white,  two-family  cottage  where 
Thomas  Carlyle  was  born ;  a  dour,  fierce  man  coming 
naturally  out  of  this  dour,  bare  village.  Like  Burns, 
he  chmbed  high  from  poverty,  but  unlike  Bums  he 
gained  friends  and  station;  but  he  was  brought  back 
to  this  bare  little  place  to  be  buried  in  a  desolate 
graveyard  whose  forbidding  wall  is  stuck  with  bills 
and  which  is  centered  by  a  dismal,  dull-red  church; 
and  on  the  big,  plain,  brown  stone  under  which  he 
rests  is  the  word  "  Humilitate  " — the  strangest  of 
words  to  apply  to  a  man  who  of  all  things  never  knew 


306 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

humility.  Or  does  it  mean  that  it  took  death  to  hum- 
ble him? 

We  remembered,  as  we  motored  out  of  Ecele- 
fechan,  one  of  the  oddest  of  literary  coincidences, 
which  was  that  Burns  was  in  Ecclefechan  in  the  very 
same  year  in  which  Carlyle  was  born  there,  and  that 
he  wrote  of  the  town  as  "  the  unfortunate,  wicked 
little  village  of  Ecclefechan." 

From  here  we  go  on  with  the  pleasantest  antici- 
pation, for  we  are  running  to  Gretna  Green,  and  as 
we  go  spinning  along  we  feel  a  salt  wind  which  comes 
stinging  into  our  faces  and  we  catch  glimpses  of 
gleaming  Solway  Firth  and  we  thrill  to  remember 
that  into  that  water  John  Paul  Jones  sailed  with 
his  American  ships  far  back  in  the  brave  Revolution- 
ary days. 

A  bright  and  pleasant  but  modern-looking  little 
place  is  Gretna  Green,  and  humdrum  even  without 
thinking  of  its  own  contrast  with  its  mass  of  romance. 
Within  the  village  we  find  amusing  internecine  war- 
fare; it  is  a  village  divided  against  itself,  for  each 
house  seems  to  claim  against  every  other  house  that 
it  alone  was  the  original  marrying  spot,  and  before 
long  the  visitor  is  reduced  to  fixing  upon  the  one  he 
would  have  fancied  for  himself  or  else  to  thinking 
that  there  were  so  many  romantic  marriages  there 
that  they  just  divided  them  up  generally  among  the 
houses.  The  claim  made  for  one  house  particularly 
interested  us:  "It  was  just  runaway  royalties  that 
was  married  here;  and  of  course  it  was  only  foreign 
royalties  " — and  we  shall  never  know  just  what  for- 
eign royalties  fled  to  Gretna  Green! 

The  house  which  interested  us  most  was  a  once- 
while  toll-house,  an  old  white  house,  than  which  noth- 
ing could  be  more  glaringly  white;  in  fact,  the  dif- 
ference between  the  country  cottages  of  this  entire 
region  has  been  that,  whereas  some  are  whitewashed 


BY  AFTON  WATER 307 

impossibly  white,  the  others  are  whitewashed  still 
whiter ! 

Close  beside  this  once-while  toll-house  is  a  little 
stream,  crossed  by  a  stone  bridge  against  which  stands 
a  clump  of  trees,  and  in  the  middle  of  the  bridge  our 
car  was  halted  with  the  front  seat  in  England  and 
the  rear  seat  in  Scotland!  But  this  international 
separation  did  not  long  continue,  and  we  went  on 
with  the  blue  water  of  Solway  close  on  our  right  and 
broad  white  sands  of  the  Solway  stretching  into  the 
distance,  and  we  saw  clouds  of  light  yellow  dust 
blown  away  from  the  lonely  sands. 

And  now  the  road  ran  on  through  a  dreary  heath 
covered  with  faint  blossoming  heather  and  with  blue- 
berries, except  for  the  places  where  peat  is  dug  and 
stacked;  for  much  of  the  heath  is  a  dryish  bog  from 
which  peat  is  cut  for  fuel ;  and  the  few  scattered  trees 
are  white  birches. 

It  did  not  seem,  however,  as  if  we  were  really  in 
England  until  we  had  gone  eight  or  nine  miles 
farther  and  reached  Carlisle ;  for  one  always  thinks  of 
Carlisle  as  being  literally  on  the  border  line.  We 
approached  this  city  with  a  great  deal  of  interest, 
on  account  of  its  very  ancient  memories,  but  found 
it  to  be  a  city  of  memories  alone,  except  for  its  castle, 
which  is  to  a  great  extent  modernized  and  is  a  bar- 
racks for  soldiers,  and  its  cathedral,  which  has  been 
so  altered  as  to  look  neither  old  nor  interesting,  and 
a  few  old  houses  alongside  of  a  few  built  in  an  un- 
successful effort  to  look  old;  but  there  was  an  at- 
tractive approach  to  the  city  and  the  place  itself 
struck  us  as  businesslike;  and  the  soldiers  of  the 
garrison  pleasantly  brighten  the  streets.  It  was  in- 
teresting to  walk  along  the  old  battlements  of  the 
castle,  and  to  look  from  these  battlements  far  across 
the  plain;  and  as  we  left  the  castle  the  evening  fan- 
fare was  sounded  to  mark  the  closing  hour,  and  there 


308 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

was  a  clanking  of  arms  as  the  night  guard  was  set, 
and  we  felt  vaguely  the  fascination  of  the  Carlisle 
of  our  fancy;  but  we  looked  about  us  and  saw  that 
the  old  Carlisle  had  really  gone,  and  thereupon  we 
motored  on  still  farther  into  England. 

It  is  a  perfect  road  for  the  eighteen  miles  to 
Penrith,  through  a  country  of  rising  hills;  and  we 
are  in  Cumberland.  A  line  of  mountains  marches 
into  view  on  the  western  horizon.  It  is  after  seven 
o'clock  and  the  air  is  of  a  fine  mellow  clearness.  The 
mountains  assume  a  finer  and  more  beautiful  aspect 
and  rise  more  nobly  against  the  sky  as  we  watch  them 
from  our  road,  which  runs  along  a  high  level,  with  a 
great  sweeping  valley  down  below. 

Penrith  is  itself  a  rather  modern-seeming  town 
which  gives  an  impression  of  being  all  hotels;  but 
curiously  tucked  out  of  sight  at  the  very  edge  of  the 
single  busy  street  is  a  picturesque  old  church,  and 
behind  the  line  of  buildings  on  the  other  side  of  the 
street  are  the  ruins  of  the  ancient  red  castle. 

We  had  noticed,  motoring  into  Penrith,  a  little 
broken  glass  in  the  roadway;  one  of  the  not  over 
half  a  dozen  times  in  the  entire  three  thousand  miles, 
with  the  exception  of  the  city  of  Glasgow;  and  we 
had  come  to  realize  that  the  glassless  roads  were  due 
in  the  first  place  to  the  thriftiness  of  the  British  in 
not  throwing  away  bottles  and  then  to  the  patrol 
service  of  the  great  automobile  clubs,  and  very  much 
indeed  to  the  fact  that  the  glass  milk  bottles  which 
so  litter  our  own  roads  seem  to  be  unknown  in  Eng- 
land, the  entire  country  having  its  milk  unsanitarily 
handled  through  brass  faucets  from  metal  tanks,  and 
finally  to  the  fact  that  the  roads  of  England  run  to 
so  great  an  extent  through  uninhabited  country  that 
there  are  no  people  there  to  scatter  debris  of  any 
kind. 

That  the  roads  themselves  are  so  uniformly  good 


The  baxks  axd  braes  of  bonxie  Doox 


Flow  gextly,  sweet  Aftox 


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Maxwelltox  House,  the  home  of  Annie  Laurie 


The  old  toll-house,  Gretna  Green,  at  the  Scotch-English 

BORDER    line 


BY  AFTON  WATER 309 

is  due  to  careful  making,  to  the  cheapness  of  hand 
labor,  to  the  use  of  tar  as  a  binder  (and  this  is  to  a 
great  extent  coming  in)  and  to  the  fact  that  they 
have  no  intense  heaving  frosts,  almost  never  a  tor- 
rential rain  and  never  that  destructive  condition,  a 
prolonged  drought.  Also,  the  roads  are  kept  neatly 
mended  in  the  spots  where  they  wear  through  and 
their  drainage  is  watched  and  seen  to,  and  when  it  is 
added  to  all  this  that  they  have  been  building  these 
roads  for  a  great  many  years  and  that  there  is  noth- 
ing hke  the  automobile  traffic  or  traffic  of  any  kind 
that  American  macadam  roads  bear,  it  will  be  some- 
what understood  why  the  British  roads  are  so  fine. 
Although  the  use  of  motor  cars  is  increasing  over 
there,  they  are  not  gaining  anything  like  the  vogue 
of  America;  not  only  do  they  pay  exorbitantly  for 
gasohne  and  for  lubricating  oil,  but  the  cars  them- 
selves are  much  more  expensive  for  makes  which,  as 
acknowledged  by  the  English  themselves,  are  of  no 
better  quality.  One  popular-price  car  sells  for  one- 
third  more  in  England  than  it  does  in  the  United 
States.  In  addition,  each  owner  of  a  car  in  Great 
Britain  is  taxed  from  thirty  to  two  hundred  and  ten 
dollars  a  year,  according  to  horsepower.  We,  as  vis- 
itors, temporary  sojourners,  had  no  tax  to  pay. 

One  good  point  about  motors  in  England  is  that 
almost  all  hotels  outside  the  large  cities  give  garage 
shelter  for  the  cars  of  their  guests  overnight  free  of 
charge,  and  in  the  few  places  where  there  is  a  charge 
it  is  only  a  shilling.  Washing  and  cleaning  the  cars, 
however,  is  likely  to  be  a  little  dearer  than  in  Amer- 
ica ;  they  are  very  slow  about  washing  a  car  and  have 
poor  facilities  for  it. 


CHAPTER  XXX 

THE  ENGLISH   LAKES 

WE  went  to  Penrith  as  the  best  place  from 
which  to  enter  the  Lake  Country  from  the 
north;  and  it  was  not  the  broken  glass  we 
had  noticed  on  entering  the  town  that  made  us,  be- 
fore going  to  the  lakes,  first  take  a  short  run  to  Eden 
Hall,  that  place  of  a  poetically  shattered  goblet: 
poetically  only,  for  in  spite  of  the  poets  it  is  under- 
stood to  be  still  intact. 

Searching  for  Eden  Hall  and  its  goblet,  we  asked 
our  way  of  a  well-set-up  young  Englishman  who 
came  on  horseback  out  of  his  park  gates.  He  was 
politely  curious  as  to  what  could  have  brought  Ameri- 
cans in  this  direction  from  Penrith  and  to  his  o\vti 
door.  For  it  was  not  merely  that  we  were  travelers ; 
he  himself  had  been  in  India,  as  an  officer  with  his 
regiment,  as  he  put  it ;  but,  really,  what  was  there  at 
Eden  Hall? 

"  Why,  the  Luck  of  Eden  Hall." 

"Oh! — Yes — I  think  I  have  heard  something 
about  that ; — an  old  keepsake,  isn't  it?  But  is  it  really 
famous? " 

Whereupon  we  told  him  that  it  was  a  very  old 
crystal  goblet,  that  had  for  generations  been  pre- 
ciously preserved  by  the  Eden  family  because  of  its 
being  bound  up  by  tradition  with  their  prosperity. 
And  we  knew  of  this  old  goblet,  made  in  Venice  and 
kept  as  an  English  heirloom,  because  it  was  written 
about  by  a  German  poet  whose  poem  was  translated 
by  an  American. 

"Fawncy!"     And  he  repeated  under  his  breath: 

310 


THE  ENGLISH  LAKES 311 

"  Venice,  England,  Germany,  America — and  right 
here !  "  And  he  pointed  out  the  road  and  we  soon 
came  to  Eden  Hall,  and  found  it  to  be  a  square- 
fronted  mansion,  somewhat  Italian  of  aspect,  and 
facing  out  over  an  Italian  terrace  with  a  big  Italian- 
like garden;  a  fitting  place  for  the  housing  of  a  pre- 
cious Italian  goblet. 

The  family  were  away;  the  house  was  occupied  by 
strangers;  the  goblet  itself  was  locked  in  a  safe  of 
unusual  strength;  but  even  when  the  family  are  here 
it  is  very  rarely  indeed  that  it  is  shown.  One  ancient 
servitor  of  the  family  said  that  he  had  never  seen 
it  himself,  but  that  he  had  always  been  told  that  his 
father  had  once  had  a  glimpse  of  it,  and  another 
equally  ancient  family  servitor  said  that  it  had  never 
been  shown  since  Queen  Victoria  had  visited  the  place 
three-quarters  of  a  century  ago  when  she  was  Princess 
Victoria. 

In  all,  it  was  one  of  those  curious  experiences  that 
give  so  much  of  interest,  and  in  the  course  of  the 
experience  we  had  seen  another  unknown  countryside. 
And  from  Eden  Hall  we  did  not  immediately  swing 
toward  the  lakes,  but  went  on  through  a  succession 
of  narrow,  twisting  English  lanes  and  lovely  little 
hamlets,  past  high-set  hedges  or  beside  bordering 
banks  and  walls,  and  up  and  up  our  road  gradually 
led  us  till  we  came  out  on  a  level  summit,  where  we 
could  look  far  off  in  all  directions,  except  that  on  one 
side,  two  miles  or  so  away,  rose  a  solemn  line  of  hills 
so  dark  blue  as  almost  to  be  black. 

And  where  we  had  mounted  by  a  final  lane  is  a 
level  field  in  which  stands  an  enormous  circle  of 
Druid  stones  of  varied  sizes;  smaller  stones,  these, 
than  those  of  Stonehenge,  though  many  of  them  are 
huge.  The  imagination  cannot  repeople  this  height; 
it  has  nothing  to  go  by;  it  has  just  age  and  immensity 
of  impression ;  it  is  one  of  those  cases  in  which,  as  the 


312 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

old  lines  aptly  have  it,  "  antiquity  appears  to  have 
begun  long  after  their  primeval  race  was  run." 
There  are  over  sixty  of  these  supposedly  Druid 
stones  still  here,  but  it  is  evident  from  the  spaces  that 
there  were  originally  even  more ;  and  at  one  side  there 
is  the  expected  solitary  monolith. 

There  was  still  another  place  to  go  before  respond- 
ing to  the  fascination  of  the  nearby  lakes,  and  this 
was  the  ruins  of  Brougham  Castle;  a  ruin  of  great 
extent,  a  mass  of  red  building  on  a  low  green  knoll, 
which  rises  from  beside  a  river  of  amber,  speckled 
v^ith  white  foam.  The  castle  has  a  brave  and  distin- 
guished history  and  is  still  a  brave  and  distinguished- 
looking  ruin.  The  splendor  falls  on  castle  walls  all 
over  Great  Britain,  and  it  often  seems  a  wonder  that 
so  many  have  been  preserved. 

From  here  we  are  off,  with  the  keenest  expecta- 
tions, toward  the  English  Lakes,  and  we  just  skirt 
Penrith  in  aiming  for  Ullswater,  and  we  make  a  turn 
at  a  crossroads  where  the  little  village  of  Eamont 
Bridge  has  set  up  a  monument  which  is  unique  among 
monuments,  for  it  sets  forth  that  four  men  of  this 
hamlet,  giving  their  names,  went  to  the  South  Afri- 
can War,  and  that  two  of  these  men,  naming  them, 
were  killed;  and  it  thus  gives  as  much  glory  to  the 
two  who  risked  their  lives  and  were  ready  to  be  killed 
for  their  country  as  to  the  two  who  died.  It  was  but 
a  short  run,  through  a  delightful  rolling  country,  be- 
fore we  were  at  Ullswater,  a  beautiful  stretch  of 
water  v^dth  mountains  rising  in  a  dark-blue  group 
beyond  it.  We  went  on  by  a  superb  road  beside  the 
beautiful  lake;  a  road  of  loveliness;  and  we  found 
the  lake  itself  characteristic  of  all  this  group  of  lakes, 
in  that  it  is  practically  without  flat  levels  between  the 
edge  of  the  water  and  the  rising  heights;  that  is  to 
say,  the  lakes  are  literally  held  in  the  hollow  of  the 
mountains. 


THE  ENGLISH  LAKES 313 

We  ran  the  entire  length  of  the  lake  to  Patterdale, 
and  then  back  a  few  miles  to  the  north  to  where  the 
romantic  little  waterfall  of  Aira  Force  comes  leaping 
down  the  mountainside,  a  white  streak  against  the 
blackness  of  the  rocks.  But  here  we  were  even  more 
interested  in  daffodils  than  in  a  fine  waterfall,  for 
it  was  at  the  very  edge  of  the  lake,  at  this  spot,  that 
the  daffodils  grew  of  which  Wordsworth  wrote  his 
well-known  and  much-loved  lines;  it  was  right  here 
that  he  saw  the  crowd,  the  host  of  golden  daffodils, 
beside  the  lake,  beneath  the  trees,  fluttering  and  danc- 
ing in  the  breeze. 

But  there  was  no  sign  of  even  a  single  daffodil. 
We  were  a  little  bit  too  late  for  them.  And  we  saw 
not  even  one  of  their  shrunken  leaves  to  tell  us  where 
they  grew.  Whereupon  an  old  road-mender,  who  was 
fortunately  at  that  very  spot,  was  asked  if  there  were 
not  in  springtime  many  daffodils  thereabouts. 

His  old  face  brightened.  "  Yes,  yes ! "  he  ex- 
claimed, eagerly;  "they  grow  everywhere";  and  he 
waved  his  arm  comprehensively. 

Then  of  course  he  could  show  us  precisely  where 
some  plants  grew?  And  again  came  his  eager  assent, 
whereupon  we  were  vastly  pleased,  and  we  all  got 
out  of  the  car,  ready,  with  tire-irons  and  screwdriver, 
to  assist  the  old  man  with  his  shovel  in  digging 
Wordsworth  daffodils  from  Wordsworth's  very  spot ; 
for  the  old  man  himself  was  readily  enlisted.  It  all 
seemed  delightful,  for  the  spot  precisely  fitted 
Wordsworth's  lines  in  being  not  only  beside  the  lake 
but  beneath  the  trees. 

But,  alas !  although  we  dug  and  delved  and  delved 
and  dug  at  spot  after  spot  pointed  out  by  the  opti- 
mistic old  man,  we  found  not  a  single  bulb;  it  was  a 
case,  as  another  poet  almost  expressed  it,  where  we 
found  not  a  plant  nor  discovered  a  bulb,  so  we  left 
them  alone  in  their  glory. 


314 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

At  this  point,  where  a  large  tract  has  been  secured 
for  the  permanent  use  and  delight  of  the  people,  we 
left  UUswater,  by  a  long  mountain  road  of  easy 
grades,  with  fine  views  of  water  and  of  heights,  and 
then  we  went  for  miles  across  a  mighty  rolling  coun- 
try, over  a  high  road  up  among  the  mountains,  with 
fields  of  buttercups  and  English  daisies  often  beside 
us,  and  broad  stretches  of  heather  and  moor  and  now 
and  then  a  little  walled  farmlet  and  at  times  pretty 
hedges  of  wild  rose,  and  then  we  would  come  to  where 
there  were  no  hedges  at  all,  but  only  green  pastures 
that  swept  aw^ay  from  the  roadside  to  the  mountains 
that  rose  above  our  lofty  road. 

And  thus  we  came  to  Keswick,  but  found  it  not 
only  a  crowded  place,  but  one  of  far  from  attractive 
atmosphere ;  but  we  were  not  in  any  way  tied  to  Kes- 
wick and  therein,  as  we  have  so  often  realized,  lies 
one  of  the  great  advantages  of  motoring,  for  it  was 
a  mere  matter  of  glancing  rapidly  at  the  place  and 
at  once  leaving  it;  and  close  at  hand  was  Derwent- 
water,  for  which  we  had  come. 

The  ride  beside  little  Derwentwater  was  three  miles 
of  beauty;  and  there  was  grandeur,  too,  for  there 
were  some  tremendous  rocky  cliffs  rising  nobly  above 
the  road;  and  we  reached  Lodore,  and  found  it  a 
pleasant  little  waterfall;  although  it  must  be  admit- 
ted that  Southey  did  exaggerate  somewhat  about  it. 
But  it  is  easily  seen,  just  off  the  roadside,  in  the  gar- 
den of  a  hotel  where  we  sat  at  a  little  outdoor  table 
and  enjoyed  a  pleasantly  served  little  feast  as  we 
looked  back,  sitting  there,  up  the  little  lake  and  at 
its  mountains  and  their  reflections.  While  we  ate 
near  the  foot  of  the  fall  one  of  us  remarked  that 
Southey's  lines  on  Lodore  were  probably  exag- 
gerated in  an  effort  to  excel  the  unknown  poet, 
quoted  by  Samuel  Rogers,  whose  delightful  lines  on 
the  Falls  of  Lanark,  with  their  "  roaring  and  grum- 


THE  ENGLISH  LAKES 315 

bling  and  leaping  and  tumbling,  and  hopping  and 
skipping  and  foaming  and  dripping,"  Southey  so 
closely  followed. 

We  returned  the  short  distance  to  Keswick,  and 
left  that  place  by  a  short  but  winding  and  very  steep 
ascent  which  developed  into  a  long  and  steady  pull, 
and  as  the  top  was  gained  there  was  a  splendid  view 
of  mountain  peaks,  massed  and  clustered,  and  par- 
ticularly notable  and  even  distinguished  were  the 
lines  of  the  bare,  treeless  mountain-tops  serrated 
sharply  against  the  sky. 

Amid  mountain  and  cliff  effects  which  became 
magnificent,  we  reached  another  of  this  delightful 
group  of  mountain-set  lakes,  and  this  was  Thirlmere, 
a  very  lonely-set  lake,  and  we  chose  a  recently-built 
road  down  its  western  bank,  understanding  it  to  be 
a  road  with  even  more  superb  views  than  those  from 
the  road  down  its  eastern  shore ;  and  as  we  passed  the 
fork  we  met  a  four-horse  touring  coach,  with  red- 
coated  coachman  and  guard,  northward  bound  to 
Keswick,  and  it  added  a  touch  of  gayety  and  bright- 
ness to  the  beautiful  but  otherwise  lonely  scene.  It 
is  interesting  to  know  that  this  little  lake,  absolutely 
unspoiled  in  itself  and  its  surroundings,  is  the  water 
supply  for  the  city  of  Manchester,  ninety-six  miles 
away  in  an  air  line;  and  that  city  has  built  the 
perfectly-made  and  surfaced  road  over  which  we  mo- 
tored beside  the  lake. 

It  is  a  glorious  ride  and  Helvellyn  rises  superbly 
from  the  water's  edge.  And,  even  though  we  cannot 
help  remembering  the  absurdity  of  the  great  poet 
who  made  Helvellyn  rhyme  with  "  the  eagle  was 
yelling,"  that  little  absurdity  served  only  to  make  the 
mountain  seem  a  sort  of  friendly  possession  and  did 
not  in  the  slightest  degree  detract  from  the  superb, 
bare  dignity. 

Another  few  miles  of  glory  and  we  are  at  the  tiny 


316 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

village  of  Grasmere,  where  the  valley  broadens  out 
just  before  reaching  the  delightful  little  bit  of  water 
from  which  the  town  takes  its  name.  We  stayed 
here  all  night,  and  after  dinner  we  walked  out  in 
the  perfect  evening  light,  following  little  paths  that 
led  up  toward  the  towering  mountains  and  feeling 
fascinated  by  the  peaceful  beauty  of  the  scenes,  the 
livable  and  lovable  quality  of  it  all ;  it  is  a  place  to  be 
buried  in  as  well  as  to  live  in,  and  here  beside  little 
Grasmere  Church  is  the  grave  of  Wordsworth,  the 
man  more  associated  than  any  other  with  the  fame 
of  the  Lake  Country. 

We  wandered  slowly  beside  the  shore  of  Grasmere, 
and,  as  we  turned  back,  the  long  light  no  longer 
trembled  across  the  lake,  for  the  sun  had  just  disap- 
peared behind  the  mountains  in  splendor,  leaving 
the  sky  a  glory  of  crimson  clouds  with  stretches  of 
pearly  green  between,  and  beneath  were  the  great 
mountains,  bare  on  their  summits  and  fir-clad  below, 
all  heavily  marked  with  shadows  of  purple,  and  in 
front  of  us  was  the  shimmering  water,  reflecting  the 
deep  dark  mountains,  reflecting  the  beauty  of  the 
sky,  reflecting  the  crimson  glory  of  the  clouds.  And 
from  far  off  came  voices,  sounding  vague  and  sweet, 
and  the  distant  plash  of  oars,  and  a  wild  duck  with 
neck  outstretched  flashed  by  above  us,  and  all  was 
loneliness  and  beauty  and  peace.  And  as  we  went  on 
toward  the  inn,  lights  began  to  twinkle  through  the 
trees  from  scattered  cottages  under  the  mountain- 
side, for  though  it  would  be  daylight  for  two  hours 
on  the  heights,  darkness  had  now  fallen  in  the  shad- 
owed valley  depths. 

In  the  morning  we  went  on  the  short  distance  to 
Rydal  Water;  a  lakelet  of  loveliness,  with  mountains 
rising  all  about  and  peeping  over  each  other's  shoul- 
ders, and  the  tiny  lake  has  tiny  little  tree-massed 
islets.    A  few  charming  homes  and  cottages  make  up 


THE  ENGLISH  LAKES 317 

the  little  village  of  Rydal,  beside  this  water,  and 
around  these  little  homes  are  masses  and  masses  of 
blooming  flowers:  lilies,  delphiniums,  rhododendrons, 
sweet  Williams,  roses  and,  especially  at  this  season, 
Canterbury  bells.  The  houses  are  delightful  with 
their  diamond  panes  and  casement  windows,  and  the 
road  is  bordered  by  splendid  hedges  or  by  ancient 
stone  walls  gray  with  mosses. 

The  place  is  simple  in  its  loveliness;  and  we  go 
up  a  steep  road,  past  a  grove  of  magnificent  beech- 
trees,  and  come  to  where  stands  the  house,  almost 
hidden  among  trees  and  shrubs  and  flowers  on  this 
steep  hillside,  where  Wordsworth  lived  for  the  long 
period  of  thirty-seven  years.  The  house  is  not  open 
to  strangers,  but  the  real  Wordsworth  is  seen  in  the 
neighboring  beauty  of  water  and  trees  and  flowers 
and  mountains. 

Although  these  are  very  old  roads  hereabouts 
through  these  valleys,  the  railroads  have  not  even  yet 
entered  the  region,  but  touch  it  only  on  its  edges, 
leaving  this  whole  Lake  Country  iti  unspoiled  beauty. 
Leaving  adorable  Rydal,  we  motored  to  Ambleside, 
a  town  at  the  head  of  Windermere,  and  here,  with- 
out immediately  seeing  more  of  Windermere  than 
lovely  glimpses  from  its  head,  we  ran  through  wind- 
ing and  wandering  roads  among  lovely  hills  to  Conis- 
ton  Water,  one  of  the  little-known  lakes  of  the 
district. 

And  we  were  glad,  when  we  came  to  Coniston  Wa- 
ter, that  the  day  had  become  misty,  with  gusts  of 
rain,  for  we  had  been  seeing  sunny  lakes  bordered  by 
sunny  mountains  and  here  there  was  all  the  beauty 
of  a  lake  shyly  hiding  among  mists  and  bordered  by 
mist-veiled  mountains,  and  at  times  the  mists  would 
go  scurrying  over  the  surface  of  the  water  and  the 
mountain  clouds  would  shift  and  change. 

Here  in  Coniston  Water,  even  now  a  lonely  lake 


318 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

in  a  lonely  region,  lived  John  Ruskin ;  and  we  looked 
forward  with  keenest  interest  to  see  in  what  kind  of 
home  this  man  chose  to  live  who  criticised  every- 
thing which  claimed  to  be  art.  And  his  house  is 
curiously  what  one  would  not  expect.  In  the  first 
place,  one  would  expect  Ruskin  to  live  in  the  midst 
of  an  old  civilization;  perhaps  on  some  Italian  lake 
or  in  the  Grand  Canal  or  perhaps  even  in  London, 
but  certainly  not  in  this  wild  and  lonely  spot,  which 
we  approach  by  a  series  of  steep  woodland  descents 
as  we  come  from  Windermere.  And  the  house  itself 
is  very  different  from  what  we  expected.  We  had 
wondered  whether  we  should  find  a  cottage  or  a  pal- 
ace; but  it  is  neither.  Standing  but  a  little  above 
the  lake,  massed  among  extremely  thick  trees  at  the 
foot  of  a  hillside,  it  does  not  represent  the  classic 
beauty  which  Ruskin  admired,  but  is  a  long,  ram- 
bling house  of  pale-yellow  stucco;  an  extremely  at- 
tractive and  comfortable  place,  but  one  which  follows 
neither  epoch  nor  style.  It  is  neither  English  nor 
Italian;  nor,  although  Ruskin  built  it,  is  it  Ruskin. 
Looking  across  its  narrow  terrace,  there  is  a  beauti- 
ful hill  and  water  view,  though  he  could  have  got 
better  views  without  going  so  far.  A  little  pebbled 
path  leads  in  front  of  the  house,  and  is  bordered 
by  exquisite  rose  trellises,  each  one  framing  a  picture 
of  the  lake — a  fascinating  idea. 

We  entered  the  dining-room  from  this  path  and 
found  that  it  fronts  out  over  the  lake,  and  that  at 
one  side  is  a  great  bank  of  narrow  windows,  in  almost 
Venetian  style,  with  stone  muUions  and  Gothic  tops; 
but  they  are  not  just  right,  and  one  wonders  that  he 
of  all  men  should  have  tolerated  them.  And  all  this 
is  what  he  himself  designed,  for  he  took  a  little  cot- 
tage and  made  it  into  this  large  house. 

The  furniture,  and  we  are  assured  it  was  his  own 
choosing,  is  of  reddish  mahogany  and  of  solid,  plain 


THE  ENGLISH  LAKES 319 

round-cornered  type ;  it  is  not  only  far  different  from 
what  one  would  expect  from  a  lover  of  the  glorious 
old-time  designs,  but  is  not  good  from  the  standards 
of  to-day.  Ruskin  did  not  express  his  personality 
in  his  home,  which  is  merely  good  and  solid  and  com- 
fortable, but  without  beauty  or  distinction. 

But  there  is  one  exception,  and  it  is  an  exception, 
indeed.  For  on  these  pea-green  walls,  among  paint- 
ings of  Ruskin  himself  as  a  child  and  of  his  parents, 
are  paintings  that  he  personally  chose  for  his  home; 
such  as  a  Doge  of  Venice,  by  Titian,  and  a  notable 
Botticelli,  and  paintings  by  Turner  and  Reynolds. 
His  library  is  as  he  left  it,  and  has  a  bowed-glass 
window  so  simple  and  so  fascinating  as  one  looks  out 
of  it  through  the  roses  and  at  the  view  that  one  al- 
most forgives  him  for  his  little  Victorian  fireplace! 
The  house,  perhaps  it  should  be  added,  is  not  shown 
unless  one  has  an  introduction. 

As  we  motored  away  from  the  spot  we  noticed, 
growing  wild  in  a  meadow  some  distance  from  the 
house,  a  great  quantity  of  yellow  iris,  which  in  Eng- 
land is  a  wild  flower,  and  we  eagerly  said  that,  if 
we  could  not  have  the  Wordsworth  daffodils,  we 
would  at  least  have  the  Ruskin  iris !  And  we  at  once 
dug  up  some  roots  and  carried  them  with  us  to  take 
hbme  to  plant  in  our  garden. 

From  here  we  swing  by  splendid  hilly  and  devious 
roads  back  to  Windermere  and,  rounding  the  south- 
ern end  of  this  largest  lake  in  England,  run  north- 
ward over  a  road  along  the  shore,  a  road  of  con- 
stant interest  and  beauty,  with  somewhat  of  homes 
and  hamlets ;  and  come  to  the  pleasant  town  of  Win- 
dermere and  at  this  point  bid  farewell  to  the  Lake 
Country,  and  turn  to  the  southeastward,  out  of 
Westmorland  and  in  the  direction  of  central 
England. 


CHAPTER  XXXI 

ON   THE   YORKSHIRE   MOORS 

WE  went  on  by  splendid  roads,  through  sweep- 
ing views,  past  pleasant  homes,  past  hay- 
makers in  the  fields;  for  we  are  quickly 
away  from  the  wildness  of  the  Lakes  and  into  simple, 
rural  beauty.  The  drizzle  of  the  morning  has  left 
us;  and  ancient  homes,  old  churches,  walls  topped 
with  golden  privet,  views  alternately  wide  stretching 
and  delicately  circumscribed,  all  are  of  fascination 
in  the  bright  sunlight. 

Then  comes  an  almost  dramatic  change,  for  a  great 
storm  approaches,  coming  swiftly  out  of  nowhere  and 
of  intense  blackness,  and  we  see  haymakers  madly 
rushing  to  save  their  crops.  We  are  nowhere  near 
a  town,  but  watch  for  a  shelter  and  then  the  storm 
is  upon  us — ^but  we  are  fortunate,  for  it  merely  draws 
its  wet  edge  over  our  car  and  we  see  the  center  of  it 
crossing  the  road  through  a  valley  in  front,  and  it 
flings  itself  against  a  great  hill,  which  it  entirely  en- 
velops in  absolute  blackness.  It  is  all  so  black  and 
swift  as  to  be  almost  terrible  in  its  grandeur. 

Thus  missing  the  storm,  we  go  on  under  a  sky 
that  now  is  grayly  overcast,  and  through  the  cool  of 
evening  our  motor  is  eating  up  the  miles,  and  we  pass 
ancient  arching  stone  bridges  over  ancient  running 
streams — and  it  occurs  to  us  that  these  ever-new 
streams  are  of  themselves  of  the  ancient  things  of 
England. 

In  one  of  the  little  towns  we  passed  an  inn  on 
whose  front  was  the  naive  sign  "  The  Naked  Man." 

820 


ON  THE  YORKSHIRE  MOORS 321 

We  had  had  "  The  Old  Tumbling  Sailor,"  "  The 
Merchant  of  Aleppo,"  "The  Eagle  and  Child," 
"  The  Loyal  Trooper,"  "  Old  First  and  Last,"  "  The 
Mare  and  Colt "  and  "  The  Ship  Aground,"  but  this 
outdid  them  all.  It  was  clear  that  the  name  came 
from  a  very  old  stone  figure  built  into  the  wall  of 
the  building;  a  figure  which  was,  to  say  the  least, 
indicative  of  the  name. 

It  was  a  long  and  splendid  flight,  and  we  thought 
again,  as  we  have  so  often  thought  on  our  journey, 
of  how  different  from  each  other  the  different  parts 
of  Great  Britain  are,  and  how  these  different  char- 
acteristics make  for  such  ever-changing  variety.  It 
was  well  on  in  the  evening  when  we  reached  the  town 
of  Skipton,  through  an  extremely  narrow  approach 
into  the  town,  and  then  on  through  the  town  by  a 
great  widening  that  is  half  street  and  half  market- 
place, and  drew  up  at  a  hotel  where  we  found  we 
could  not  stay,  because  it  was  to  be  sold  under  fore- 
closure next  morning.  So  we  went  to  another,  pass- 
ing a  thronged  corner  where  a  nervous  and  officious 
policeman  was  issuing  contradictory  commands.  But 
he  was  easily  managed  by  the  simple  question,  "  Now, 
just  where  do  you  want  us  to  go?  "    And  we  went. 

There  is  an  ancient  church  here  in  Skipton  which 
still  rings  the  curfew  at  eight  o'clock,  but  that  no- 
body pays  any  attention  to  it  does  at  least  take  away 
from  its  importance.  The  church  is  an  effective 
square-towered  old  building,  with  stately  monuments 
to  the  Cliffords,  for  this  is  the  center  of  the  Clifford 
country,  and  near  the  church  is  the  superb  towered 
gateway  which  leads  from  the  street  of  the  almost 
sordid  town  into  the  grounds  of  the  mighty  castle, 
the  old-time  seat  of  the  powerful  Cliffords,  one  of 
the  great  family  names  of  English  history. 

Even  now,  after  the  numberless  things  we  have 
seen  on  our  long  journey,  we  still  find  that  we  can 


322 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

be  enthusiastic  in  regard  to  an  old  castle,  and  espe- 
cially such  an  old  castle  as  this.  We  go  through 
the  gateway  in  the  bright  morning  sunlight,  and  find 
that  a  great  part  of  the  great  structure  is  practically 
modern  and  that  it  is  lived  in,  but  also  that  a  very 
great  extent  is  very  old  and  unused  and  entirely  un- 
changed. We  enter  an  inner  courtyard,  a  lovely 
place  which  was  a  century  old  at  the  time  when  that 
famous  Clifford  known  as  the  Shepherd  Earl,  the  son 
of  Shakespeare's  "  black-faced  Clifford,"  led  his  great 
following  to  Flodden ;  and  so  we  take  it  that  the  great 
yew-tree  in  the  center  of  this  court  is  probably  five 
hundred  years  old ;  and  it  so  spreads  out  its  umbrella- 
like branches  as  to  roof  over  the  entire  courtyard  and 
give  to  it  all  a  deep-green,  ghostly  gloom;  and  yet, 
though  it  is  gloom,  it  is  a  pleasant  gloom,  dimly  sug- 
gestive of  centuries  of  happiness.  Fair  Rosamond 
was  born  in  this  castle,  though  not  perhaps  in  any 
part  now  preserved,  and  perhaps  some  sense  of  her 
beauty  lingers  vaguely  about  the  old  pile;  and  an- 
other beautiful  woman  was  here,  Mary  Stuart,  when 
a  prisoner. 

Ancient  stone  coats-of-arms,  almost  obliterated  by 
Time,  range  around  the  yew-tree's  base.  The  tree 
itself  is  mossed  to  the  very  top  of  its  trunk,  and  moss 
touches  lightly  the  red  stone  of  the  courtyard  walls, 
the  lovely,  narrow  mullioned  windows  and  the  pro- 
jecting oriels.  It  is  an  intimate  little  courtyard,  sug- 
gestive of  romance  and  sweet  mystery  and  not  in  the 
least  of  the  grimness  and  sternness  of  the  past;  and 
from  here  we  go  wandering  through  a  labyrinth  of 
ancient,  empty  rooms,  and  once  we  walk  up  ancient 
steps  that  were  built  in  the  time  of  William  the  Con- 
queror; for  we  are  walking  through  the  centuries, 
here  in  this  great  ancient  portion  of  the  castle,  and 
come  to  nothing  less  ancient  than  hundreds  of  years 
ago. 


ON  THE  YORKSHIRE  MOORS 323 

Doors  open  fascinatingly  into  ancient  little  rooms 
or  great  halls  and  apartments,  and  there  is  an  ancient 
kitchen  with  its  great  fireplaces  for  many  generations 
cold;  there  are  ancient  empty  bedrooms  whose  cap- 
tivating windows  are  what  we  have  been  admiring 
from  the  courtyard;  many  of  the  labyrinthine  pas- 
sages are  dark  and  gloomy  and  a  winding  dark  stair 
leads  us  down  to  what  no  house  of  the  good  old  times 
was  really  complete  without,  an  absolutely  dark 
dungeon ;  and  we  mount  to  the  very  roof,  all  of  stone 
and  seamed  with  lead,  and  from  here  there  are  -fine 
views  over  the  hills  and  moors,  and  we  see,  what  is 
now  hidden  from  the  town  approach,  the  stream  that 
made  the  ancient  moat  winding  around  the  castle 
base.  And  it  may  be  added  that  the  so-called  new 
part  of  the  castle  was  built  two  hundred  years  ago. 

We  had  often  heard  that  on  some  of  the  old  castles 
and  mansions  of  Yorkshire,  and  we  are  now  in  York- 
shire, there  was  open  stone  lettering  of  family  mot- 
toes along  the  tops  of  parapets,  and  here  we  saw, 
most  effectively  lettered  against  the  sky,  over  the 
ancient  gateway,  in  open  letters,  Desormais,  that 
stand-forever  motto  of  the  Cliffords,  Henceforth. 

And  yet  the  memory  of  the  mighty  Cliffords  has 
gone ;  the  family  glory  glimmers  through  the  dreams 
of  things  that  were.  And  this  is  remindful  of  an 
amazing  discovery  that  we  have  made  in  England. 
We  had  taken  it  for  granted  that  not  only  are  castles 
old,  but  that  the  peerage  is  old ;  that  not  only  are  the 
rights  and  the  wealth  of  the  peers  immense,  but  that 
all  this  has  been  inherited  prescriptively  through  cen- 
turies from  the  time  of  the  Norman  Conquest.  So 
it  amazed  us  to  find,  gradually,  that  of  the  many 
dukedoms  the  very  oldest  was  created  in  1398,  that 
thirteen  were  created  in  the  eighteenth  century  and 
six  even  as  late  as  in  the  nineteenth;  that  no  mar- 
quis' title  is  older  than  1551,  that  twenty  marquisates 


324 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

are  of  the  nineteenth  century  and  that  three  are  even 
of  the  present  twentieth ;  and  so  it  goes  on  even  more 
surprisingly  with  the  lower  peerage  ranks.  The 
ancient  families  have  dwindled  in  importance  or  dis- 
appeared, and  the  devotion  and  subservience  of  the 
people  have  been  transferred  to  these  upstarts,  men 
of  wealth,  brewers  and  distillers,  soapmakers  and  dry- 
cleaners,  or  their  descendants,  with  quite  a  number, 
among  the  most  prominent  and  wealthy  of  all,  de- 
scendants of  women  who  gave  questionable  service  to 
royalty,  and  with  a  sprinkling  of  men  famous  in  the 
law  and  of  others  who  have  won  their  country's 
battles. 

Such  thoughts  naturally  come  at  this  ancient 
stronghold  of  the  Cliffords;  and  from  this  castle  we 
go  on  our  way  to  another  interesting  memento  of 
ancient  times  but  of  different  character,  for  five  miles 
from  Skipton  Castle  are  the  ruins  of  Bolton  Abbey. 

Bolton  Abbey  is  a  beautiful  ruin  set  in  alluring 
environment ;  and  how  the  old-time  monks  did  choose 
beauty  spots ! — as  at  Tintern,  at  Fountains  and  here. 
We  enter  the  broad  abbey  grounds  literally  through 
a  hole  that  was  long  ago  broken  through  the  wall  and 
which  is  still  used  as  the  main  entrance.  It  is  curi- 
ous, too,  that  this  is  one  of  the  few  places  in  Eng- 
land where  there  is  no  admission  charge;  and  yet 
it  is  owned  by  one  of  the  dukes. 

The  abbey  is  on  a  low-set  peninsula  and  a  river 
bends  sweetly  and  restfuUy  by,  and  there  is  a  wide 
stretch  of  meadow  and  of  easy,  grassy  slopes,  and  far 
away  rise  low  cliffs ;  it  is  peculiarly  a  place  of  peace- 
fulness,  even  the  great  woolly  cattle  with  their  curv- 
ing horns  that  come  up  to  us,  come  peacefully;  and 
a  positively  captivating  bit  is  an  ancient  series  of 
stepping-stones,  fifty-eight  in  number,  set  firmly  in 
the  riverbed.  We  crossed  from  side  to  side  of  the 
stream  on  these  stones  just  as  the  monks  themselves 


MWtflV 


A    MOUXTAIX    ROAD    XEAR    DeRWENT    WaTER 


Looking  across  Thirlmere  at  Helvellyn 


At  delightful  Rydal  Water 


The  home  of  Johx  Ruskin  ok  Coniston  Watee 


ON  THE  YORKSHIRE  MOORS 325 

used  to  cross — and  rescued,  or  at  least  helped  to 
safety,  three  Englishwomen  who  got  part  way  and 
were  only  able  to  scream,  each  on  her  individual 
stone. 

As  we  went  off  through  the  hole  in  the  wall,  there 
was  an  invasion  of  boy  scouts,  who  have  become  a 
marked  and  frequent  feature  of  the  English  land- 
scape. From  here  we  aim  still  farther  into  York- 
shire, swinging  for  a  short  time  through  a  comfort- 
able and  prosperous  country,  but  soon  mounting  high 
among  bare  hills  and  going  on  through  bareness  to- 
ward Keighley;  a  place  which  is  pronounced  Keeth- 
ley!  Approaching  Keighley  we  had  crossed  the 
river  Aire,  and  when  we  saw  the  familiar-looking 
dogs,  rangy,  alert,  rough-coated,  we  recognized  them 
as  Airedales,  and  it  was  pleasant  to  think  that  we  had 
been  running  through  the  region  where  this  dog  has 
long  been  raised. 

Keighley  is  a  modern,  prosperous-looking,  manu- 
facturing place,  and  at  a  corner  in  the  center  of  the 
town  in  front  of  a  public  building  we  saw  some  half- 
dozen  policemen  looking  intently  and  watchfully  at 
nothing,  and  standing  in  immovable  silence,  and  fac- 
ing them  were  several  hundred  men  ranked  with 
almost  military  precision  away  from  the  center  of 
the  road,  and  these  men  also  stood  in  immovable 
silence,  and  each  of  these  hundreds  of  men  had  his 
eyes  fixed  upon  the  entrance  of  the  building.  It  was 
an  uncanny  scene,  in  the  threatening  tenseness  of  it. 
It  appeared  that  a  strike  was  on  in  the  town  and  that 
one  of  the  leaders  had  been  violently  arrested,  and 
that  all  of  these  men,  his  friends,  were  standing  here 
in  mute  protest  waiting  for  him  to  appear  on  his  way 
to  court. 

From  Keighley  we  turn  off  into  a  great  moor  coun- 
try, a  stern  region  of  bare  and  sweeping  land,  high 
and  bleak,  and  we  go  through  a  series  of  unhappy- 


326 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

looking  villages  and  come  to  a  largish  town,  from 
which  we  can  look  far  up  to  a  cluster  of  houses  on 
a  moorland  hilltop ;  and  a  low  tower  that  is  in  that 
cluster  we  know  to  be  Haworth  church,  of  which  the 
father  of  the  Bronte  sisters  was  rector.  But  how  to 
get  there  seems  a  trifle  difficult;  by  going  down  still 
deeper  and  then  chmbing  up  a  great  steepness  of 
road  seems  to  be  the  only  way;  and  again  wonder 
comes  that  anybody  could  have  deemed  England  to 
be  a  level  country ! — and  there  comes  the  further  and 
never-to-be-answered  question  of  why  people  have 
built  villages  on  such  inaccessible  and  utterly  unde- 
sirable heights.  But  before  we  essay  the  steepness 
with  our  car,  a  policeman's  wife,  whom  we  find  in 
sole  charge  of  the  police  station — how  delightfully 
they  do  some  things  over  here ! — ^lets  us  have  water  for 
the  boiling  radiator  and  at  the  same  time  points  out 
a  private  toll-road,  and  we  find  it  a  queer  and  primi- 
tive little  road,  but  it  does  let  us  into  an  easier  ap- 
proach to  the  hilltop  and  to  the  bare  little  village 
of  Haworth. 

Looking  off  from  this  drear  hilltop,  the  outlook  is 
over  miles  and  miles  of  saddening  bleakness,  with  the 
immediate  air  blackened  with  smoke  from  the  fac- 
tories in  the  valley.  About  us,  in  the  little  village 
we  have  reached,  on  the  top  of  this  height,  are  tight- 
built,  unhappy-looking  little  houses  suggestive  of 
poor  living  and  of  a  narrow  outlook  not  to  be  re- 
lieved by  literal  breadth  of  view;  and  in  the  center 
of  the  huddle  is  the  little  church  and  beside  it  is  a 
large  gloomy  graveyard  huddled  thick  with  standing 
and  lying  stones.  The  graveyard  is  dismally  shaded, 
and  over  a  low  wall  which  hems  it  in  is  the  largish 
front  of  an  old  stone  house,  and  this  was  the  home 
of  the  Brontes.  No  wonder  those  three  sisters  wrote 
grimly!  Nor  is  there  much  relief  on  the  other  side 
of  the  house,  for  the  windows  open  out  upon  a  great 


ON  THE  YORKSHIRE  MOORS 327 

stretch  of  desolation,  and,  gloomy  though  it  is,  the 
house  does  not  look  quite  so  grim  as  when  the 
Brontes  lived  here,  for  the  windows  of  its  front  have 
been  widened. 

We  left  the  little  perched  hamlet  and  went  down 
the  steep  road  which  we  had  avoided  in  going  up,  for 
it  would  make  a  very  material  shortening  of  our 
onward  distance ;  and  there  was  no  trouble  whatever, 
for  with  a  little  care  we  managed  to  go  easily  down. 

Soon  we  had  to  swing  up  again,  up  long,  long 
stretches  of  climbing  roads,  and  we  went  for  miles 
across  a  summit-land  of  moors.  And  here  the  un- 
happy aspect  so  noticeable  where  the  moors  are  dotted 
with  unhappy  villages  disappeared,  and,  in  this 
immensity  of  bleakness  and  loneliness,  with  horizons 
illimitable,  with  houses  rarely  to  be  seen,  there  is  a 
general  aspect  of  stern  grandeur  and  not  infrequently 
much  of  a  certain  grim  beauty.  The  seldom-seen 
houses  are  of  heavy  stone,  with  windows  heavily  mul- 
lioned,  and  are  of  a  gravity  and  sternness  befitting 
the  sternly  grave  moors. 

All  this  is  in  the  West  Riding  of  Yorkshire;  and 
for  centuries  the  men  hereabouts  have  been  known 
as  dalesmen,  because  they  grouped  their  homes  and 
farms  for  shelter  in  the  deep  and  often  abrupt  val- 
leys which,  just  out  of  sight  in  the  general  views, 
intersect  the  moors.  At  length  we  come  to  the  ne- 
cessity of  descending  from  the  moors  and  we  drop 
down  into  the  busy  little  center  of  Hebden  Bridge,  a 
place  with  the  reputation  of  making  the  best  woolen 
cloth  in  England,  and  from  here  we  climb  again ;  and 
it  is  the  hardest  climb  on  our  entire  journey. 

We  were  to  mount  to  tiny  Heptonstall,  perched 
far  above  us,  and  we  were  told  that  the  road  was  very 
steep  but  good,  and  that  it  had  been  used  in  road- 
climbing  contests,  which  did  not  sound  altogether 
promising  for  people  who  were  traveling  for  pleasure 


328 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

alone  and  not  for  endurance;  but  it  was  suggested 
that  at  a  point  quite  a  distance  up  we  should  turn  to 
the  right  at  a  chapel  and  complete  the  climb  by  a 
way  comparatively  easy.  We  started  and  went  up 
interminably,  the  road  getting  steeper  and  steeper, 
and  we  looked  vainly  for  the  chapel  and  the  turn. 
We  did  at  length  come  to  where  there  was  a  turn, 
but  there  was  no  sight  of  a  chapel,  and  the  turn  was 
a  dip  down  the  hill,  making  an  apparently  absurd 
place  to  stop  our  climbing,  for  the  road  was  particu- 
larly steep  there  and  in  addition  was  narrowed  by 
some  piles  of  repair  material,  and  if  we  had  stopped 
we  should  very  likely  not  have  been  able  to  gain  mo- 
mentum again.  But  it  was  the  turn  that  we  should 
have  taken,  after  all,  though  we  had  not  been  told 
that  the  turn  began  with  a  downward  dip,  and  the 
chapel  was  a  building  we  had  noticed  that  looked 
absolutely  unlike  a  chapel  and  only  like  a  kind  of 
shop  or  mill.  And  so  we  kept  on  climbing,  and  to- 
ward the  summit  the  road  became  all  cobbles ;  almost 
a  cobbled  stair;  so  that  our  progress  was  materially 
checked  by  the  roughness  as  well  as  by  the  steepness ; 
but  we  kept  on — it  was  not  a  place  to  stop  even  to 
lighten  the  load — and  we  finally  mounted  what  the 
inhabitants  expressively  call  the  Buttress,  and  were 
at  Heptonstall. 

It  is  a  hill  town  curiously  suggestive  of  the  hill 
towns  of  Italy;  and  we  found  that  long  ago  the 
Romans  had  a  station  here  and  that  later  the  Nor- 
mans came;  and  now  it  is  a  compactly-built  little 
place  of  old  stone  houses,  stone-roofed,  and  in  its  cen- 
ter is  a  close-packed  churchyard  full  of  the  mingled 
graves  of  mingled  centuries;  and  there  are  two 
churches  within  the  churchyard,  one  new,  but  the 
other  a  roofless  but  still  towered  ruin  which  dates 
from  over  six  hundred  years  ago. 

Great  solitary  roads  stretch  off  from  here,  and 


The  home  of  the  Brontes,  beside  the  Haworth 
churchyard 


The  moorland  vale  of  Alcomdene 


ON  THE  YORKSHIRE  MOORS 829 

deep  valleys  drop  abruptly  down,  and  we  follow  on 
some  of  the  roads  through  a  wild  and  glorious  region 
and  through  now  and  then  a  bleak  stone  village  and 
past  solitary  mullion-windowed  farmhouses,  and  we 
come,  in  the  midst  of  the  stern  glory  of  it  all,  to  the 
sunny,  captivating  valley  of  Alcomdene,  with  a 
stream  rippling  brightly  through  it,  and  a  few  scat- 
tered ancient  houses  sheltered  here  from  the  great 
winds  of  the  moor  and  each  one  shaded  by  a  few 
dark  trees. 

We  felt  the  fascination  of  it  all;  and,  although  we 
were  now  at  a  place  but  three  or  four  miles  across 
the  moors  from  Haworth,  we  had  been  compelled  to 
detour  some  twenty-five  miles  in  motoring  to  get 
there,  on  account  of  the  deep  hidden  dales.  All 
about  Alcomdene,  on  the  great  moors  that  stretch 
off  from  this  valley,  are  grandeur  and  beauty  and 
lonehness  without  unhappiness,  and  we  found  the 
people  in  all  this  entire  region  a  silent,  sturdy  and 
vigorous  folk,  with  a  certain  aspect  as  of  moun- 
taineers. 

We  stayed  for  the  night  at  an  old  house,  half  home 
and  half  an  inn  for  grouse  hunters — this  being  a  won- 
derful grouse- shooting  region — and  under  the  morn- 
ing sun  we  looked  out  over  the  bleak  country  and 
the  splendid  dignity  of  moor  and  valley,  and  then 
went  on  our  way. 

Before  long  we  are  out  of  this  region  and  reacK 
a  region  that  leads  us  on  for  miles  and  miles  through 
a  succession  of  manufacturing  towns;  the  towns  all 
bare  and  unlovely  and  the  intermittent  landscape  also 
bare  and  unlovely;  there  is  a  striking  absence  of  the 
happiness  and  brightness  of  aspect  that  we  should  like 
to  associate  with  prosperous  manufacturing  places. 
We  go  through  Halifax;  and  how  strange  a  city  it 
seems  for  the  writing  of  "  Robinson  Crusoe,"  of  all 
books !    And  one  realizes  that  this  general  moor  coun- 


330 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

try  inspires  books  which  are  at  least  out  of  the  com- 
mon line,  such  as  "  Wuthering  Heights,"  "  Jane 
Eyre,"  "  The  Secret  Garden  "  and  "  Robinson  Cru- 
soe." For  we  are  still  in  a  general  moor  region,  but 
a  moor  region  that  has  been  turned  into  a  manufac- 
turing region. 

We  go  rapidly  on  over  slopes  and  through  val- 
leys and  finally  approach  the  old  manufacturing  city 
of  Sheffield,  still  famous  for  its  cutlery,  and  we  go 
into  the  city  by  a  long,  long  road  of  houses  of  an 
unattractiveness  which  seems  bordering  on  misery, 
and  in  the  center  of  the  city  we  see  evident  indica- 
tions that  it  is  a  wealth-producing  place,  but  are  also 
reminded  of  a  statement  that  we  have  somewhere 
heard  (but  which  is  not  true  of  a  city  like  Manchester, 
though  it  may  be  true  of  this)  that  one  never  sees  a 
man  walking  with  a  smile  on  his  face  in  an  English 
city.  And  we  at  least  did  not  see  smiles  in  Sheffield. 
We  gain  an  impression,  too,  as  of  a  city  that  is  lack- 
ing in  civic  pride.  And  it  is  certainly  a  point  of 
interest  in  regard  to  Sheffield  that  a  great  portion 
of  the  city  is  the  personal  property  of  the  Duke  of 
Norfolk. 

Worksop  was  our  next  objective  point,  less  than 
twenty  miles  farther  to  the  eastward,  and  we  ap- 
proached it  through  a  countryside  whose  beauty  has 
largely  disappeared,  defaced  as  it  is  by  collieries  and 
their  debris,  and  by  brick  works  and  factories.  There 
is  such  a  vast  quantity  of  wonderfully  picturesque 
countryside  in  England  that  it  is  well  to  realize  that 
there  is  some  small  proportion  of  countryside  that 
is  spoiled. 

We  arrived  at  Worksop  late  and  spent  the  night 
there,  at  a  thoroughly  good  inn,  and  it  was  curious 
to  realize  that  we  had  come  at  this  point  to  within 
eight  miles  of  where  we  were  on  our  northern  jour- 
ney, when  on  the  way  to  Scrooby.    Worksop  is  en- 


ON  THE  YORKSHIRE  MOORS 331 

tirely  a  duke-owned  town,  famous  for  its  ale,  it 
being  a  possession  of  the  Duke  of  Newcastle ;  a  bare, 
brick,  lord-owned  town  with  only  one  lordly  thing 
within  it,  an  ancient  priory  gate,  and  even  this  is 
bare  and  bald  in  its  setting. 

But  there  was  one  other  pleasant  thing  in  Work- 
sop after  all,  for  there  was  a  market  with  little  fishes 
curled  up  to  bite  their  own  tails  and  big  ones  ar- 
ranged in  geometric  patterns,  in  the  open  air — of 
course,  without  ice  or  screens,  for  they  would  not  be 
English! — and  there  was  poultry,  each  chicken  hav- 
ing a  little  snuft  of  feathers  left  on  its  tail  to  show 
its  color  and  breed  and  with  its  feet  curiously  crossed 
like  those  of  a  Crusader  on  a  monument.  Inci- 
dentally, too,  we  noticed  that  meat  and  meat  bones 
for  the  poorest  folk  could  be  bought  for  three  or  four 
cents  a  pound,  although  the  best  cuts  were  well  over 
thirty  cents  a  pound. 

In  a  little  shop  in  Worksop  an  Englishwoman, 
standing  beside  one  of  us,  was  looking  at  umbrellas, 
and  asked,  dubiously,  "  But  will  this  wear?  "  Where- 
upon the  dealer  replied,  with  a  smile  that  only  half 
hid  the  insolence  of  the  cleverness — and  one  does  so 
often  notice  a  quarrelsome  attitude  in  the  British 
salesman! — "  Can  you  expect  eternity  for  five 
shilUngs?" 


CHAPTER  XXXII 

SHERWOOD   FOREST  AND   HADDON   HALL 

WE  had  come  to  the  lord-owned  place  with  the 
unlordly  name  of  Worksop  as  the  point 
from  which  to  enter  the  lordly  Dukeries;  a 
name  which  has  come  to  be  applied  to  a  remarkable 
group  of  ducal  estates  near  here;  and  first  we  motor 
through  miles  of  Clumber  Park  and,  as  motors  are 
forbidden  by  the  direct  road,  we  reach  it  by  a  longer 
permissible  way  and  enter  through  park  gates  into 
an  avenue,  three  miles  long,  of  lime-trees  in  a  double 
row  on  each  side ;  and  the  shadows  of  the  trees  lie  like 
castellations  on  the  long  white  road.  Thinnish  woods, 
largely  of  white  birch  but  also  of  the  larch,  the 
spruce,  the  pine,  the  fir,  stretch  off  into  the 
distances,  and  many  pheasants  with  their  little  ones 
are  cowering  in  the  grass,  and  gorgeous  male  pheas- 
ants are  stalking  under  the  very  tall  bracken  which  is 
like  a  green  veil  spread  high  over  the  ground. 

And  all  this  woodland  arouses  delightful  memories, 
for  all  this  is  Sherwood  Forest,  so  rich  in  romantic 
memories  of  Robin  Hood.  There  are  some  enormous 
oaks  along  these  forest  roads  which  may  well  go  back 
to  the  romantic  days  of  the  famous  outlaw,  and  the 
forest  is  dotted  with  open  glades:  a  veritable 
"  forest  ancient  as  the  hills,  inclosing  sunny  spots  of 
greenery." 

Clumber  House,  which  has  given  a  name  to  a  little 
kind  of  spaniel  once  raised  here  which,  unlike  other 
spaniels,  hunts  silently,  is  itself  an  immense  and  im- 
posing edifice,  a  little  lonely  and  closed-up  in  appear- 

333 


HADDON  HALL  333 

ance,  sitting  low  on  the  ground,  fronted  by  pleasant 
pleasure  grounds  and  terraces  and  looking  out  over 
a  great  sheet  of  water  with  which  it  is  almost  on  a 
level.    It  is  the  seat  of  the  Duke  of  Newcastle. 

A  short  and  agreeable  run  takes  us  to  Welbeck 
Abbey,  which  is  not  in  any  sense  an  abbey,  but  is  the 
enormous  mansion  of  the  Duke  of  Portland.  We 
had  had  romantic  Sherwood  Forest  and  Clumber  all 
to  ourselves  without  meeting  or  seeing  a  single  other 
visitor,  but  at  Welbeck  there  is  the  greatest  imagi- 
nable contrast,  for  there  are  throngs,  veritable  hordes, 
of  English  visitors;  almost  all  men — "trippers" 
from  Leeds,  Sheffield  and  such  nearby  cities,  it  being 
a  Saturday  afternoon — with  the  wives  left  at  home; 
and  we  see  not  an  American  there  but  ourselves. 

Welbeck  has  a  vast  extent  of  underground  rooms 
and  passages,  and  the  crowds  go  through  in  care  of 
guides,  with  a  hundred  or  more  in  each  party.  They 
go  through  with  a  careless  swaggering,  with  a  sort 
of  admiring  contempt  in  which  the  contempt  is 
stronger  than  the  admiration — and  a  certain  furtive 
jealousy  is  evidently,  with  many,  stronger  than  either. 
All  visitors  who  wish  to  enter  at  all,  and  who  get 
started  on  the  way,  are  compelled  to  do  a  tremen- 
dous amount  of  walking  before  the  guide  finishes  his 
course;  and  in  passing  between  buildings  we  notice 
that  a  number  of  the  men  pluck  garden  flowers  and 
baldly  make  a  show  of  them,  and  in  the  great  under- 
ground rooms  we  notice  that  some  of  them,  from 
bravado  and  contempt,  sit  down  and  sprawl  in  valu- 
able chairs  not  supposed  to  be  even  touched.  It  was 
impossible  to  see  these  men  carelessly  mobbing 
through,  without  thinking  what  might  some  day  hap- 
pen if  the  lure  of  loot  and  liberty  were  offered  them. 

And  it  was  interesting  to  hear  a  quiet  English- 
man, looking  with  disapproval  on  all  this,  saj^:  "  I 
would  rather  have  laws  made  by  a  crazy  duke  than  by 


334    TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

a  workingman's  member  of  parliament."  But  all 
dukes  are  not  crazy,  although  the  one  who  built  this 
vast  underground  expensiveness  may  well  have  been, 
nor  fortunately  are  all  British  workingmen  like  these, 
who  evidently  come  from  such  unhappy  and  unfor- 
tunate surroundings  as  we  have  been  seeing  on  our 
way  here. 

We  expected  something  at  least  mysterious  in  the 
Welbeck  subterraneanism,  but  it  represents  nothing 
whatever  but  extravagant  folly  and  f reakishness ;  and 
much  of  it  is  nothing  more  than  concrete  passage- 
ways such  as  might  connect  one  warehouse  with  an- 
other; there  are  literally  miles  of  underground  and 
semi-underground  construction  of  one  kind  or  an- 
other, although  visitors  are  not  piloted  through  all 
of  it.  There  is  a  huge  ballroom  beautifully  floored, 
whose  glassed  ceiling  is  on  a  level  with  the  flower- 
beds outside,  and  this  room  has  considerable  ex- 
pensive furniture,  and  its  walls  are  lined  by  a  large 
number  of  notable  paintings  by  Raphael,  Van  Dyke, 
Tintoretto,  Rubens  and  others — the  list  is  long — and, 
instead  of  this  underground  housing,  such  paintings 
certainly  deserve  to  be  placed  in  the  tremendous  man- 
sion, with  its  myriad  rooms,  above  ground.  They  are 
too  precious  for  a  cellar. 

Everything  at  Welbeck  is  vast,  and  it  might  al- 
most be  said  that  nothing  is  in  good  taste  or  beau- 
tiful, except  that  there  must  needs  be  considerable 
beauty  in  the  flowers  and  trees  of  the  vast  extent  of 
park  and  gardens. 

We  leave  Welbeck  gladly,  yet  glad  to  have  seen  a 
place  of  which  the  world  hears  so  much;  and  strike  off 
through  a  pleasant  country,  with  ever  the  road  wind- 
ing on  through  narrow  green  lanes,  and  passing  from 
time  to  time  through  a  little  village  and  finally,  just 
a  few  miles  northwest  of  Mansfield,  we  enter  a  long 
park  drive  and  motor  on,  past  beautiful  open  glades. 


HADDON  HALL 335 

bordered  by  great  trees,  past  deer  that  dot  the  green- 
ery and  to  the  front  of  Hardwick  Hall. 

Hardwick  Hall,  built  in  the  time  of  Queen  Eliza- 
beth by  that  famous  Countess  of  Shrewsbury  who 
is  known  to  this  day  as  Bess  of  Hardwick,  is  not  only 
a  building  of  superb  size  and  beauty,  but  stands  com- 
plete, unspoiled  and  untouched,  as  a  building  of  the 
Elizabethan  era. 

In  the  lofty  open  stonework,  topping  each  corner 
at  the  front,  are  the  stone  letters  "  E.  S.,"  for  Eliza- 
beth of  Shrewsbury— which  nobody  ever  calls  her! 
The  people  of  the  house  refer  to  her  respectfully  as 
Elizabeth  of  Hardwick,  and  the  world  in  general  uses 
Hardwick  with  the  Bess. 

In  spite  of  putting  on  speed,  we  arrived  here  after 
the  closing  hour  for  visitors,  which  on  Saturdays 
is  one  o'clock,  but  it  merely  needed  a  few  words  of 
explanation,  and  we  were  cheerfully  shown  through 
the  entire  mansion;  one  of  the  most  satisfactory  and 
interesting  places  in  all  Great  Britain. 

There  are  rooms  palatial  in  extent  and  in  furnish- 
ings, and  there  is  a  wonderful  collection  of  old-time 
paintings  that  are  portraits  of  contemporaries  of  Bess 
of  Hardwick  and  Queen  Elizabeth; — truly  a  time  of 
imperious  women,  that,  for  Bess  of  Hardwick  is  re- 
puted to  have  been  one  of  the  most  imperious  that 
ever  lived,  and  Queen  Elizabeth  was  certainly  more 
imperious  still. 

There  are  great,  lofty,  sunny  rooms  and  galleries; 
there  are  rooms  of  intimate  delightf ulness ;  there  are 
one  or  two  rooms  particularly  associated  with  Mary 
Stuart,  who  spent  some  of  her  years  of  imprisonment 
in  Bess  of  Hardwick's  charge,  and  there  are  personal 
mementos  preserved  here  of  that  unfortunate  Queen, 
such  as  the  bed  in  which  she  slept  and  the  embroi- 
deries which  she  wrought. 

This  building  was  never  in  any  sense  a  castle;  it 


336 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

was  always  a  palace;  nor  is  it  yet  in  any  degree  a 
ruin.  It  is  a  beautiful  place,  beautifully  preserved; 
one  remembers  the  old-time  story  that  its  builder, 
when  young,  was  told  by  a  fortune-teller  that  she 
would  never  die  so  long  as  she  continued  to  build; 
whereupon  the  passion  of  her  life  became  that  of 
building,  and  she  constructed  other  notable  buildings 
besides  this,  and  was  never  weary  of  adding  details 
to  keep  away  Death ;  but  in  the  bitter  winter  of  1607 
it  became  so  cold  that  her  workmen  had  to  stop — 
and  then  passed  away  the  famous  Bess  of  Hardwick. 

Hardwick  Hall  is  one  of  the  places  particularly 
worth  the  seeing,  so  full  is  it  of  beauty  and  of  inter- 
est; and  as  we  motor  away  we  take  a  long  last  look 
at  it,  standing  there  with  such  dignity  on  a  great 
natural  terrace  above  the  stream,  and  the  sun  glints 
from  its  many  windows,  reminding  us  of  the  rhj'^me, 
contemporary  with  its  building,  of  "  Hardwick  Hall, 
more  glass  than  wall,"  so  many  thousands  of  glass 
window-panes  did  Bess  of  Hardwick  put  in. 

There  was  still  another  great  mansion  that  we 
wished  to  see;  Chatsworth,  the  seat  of  the  Duke  of 
Devonshire;  and  we  reached  it  by  running  north- 
ward and  through  the  aristocratically  named  little 
city  of  Chesterfield,  which  is  dominated  by  the  most 
grotesque  thing  in  England,  a  tall,  old,  twisted 
church-spire ;  not  crooked,  not  bent,  but  literallj^  and 
incredibly  twisted.  Literalists  try  to  explain  that 
this  came  gradually  through  a  curious  warping  of  its 
lead  and  timber  construction,  but  those  who  know 
insist  that  the  devil  seized  the  spire  in  his  hands  and 
twisted  it,  a  hundred  years  or  so  ago;  and  of  course 
it  is  perfectly  obvious,  as  a  policeman  squinting  up 
at  it  with  us  said,  that  it  has  the  very  devil  of  a  twist. 

From  Chesterfield,  a  run  of  a  few  miles  to  the 
westward  took  us  through  pleasant  little  Baslow  to 
Chatsworth  Park.     The  immense  buff-colored  man- 


Under  the  oaks  of  Sherwood  Forest 


V'  ■ 

^^^^^«%;^ ' . 

L  1.  ft  1  «flH 

L.  k  ."^H 

■■rrrrx  'i  ■  - 

* 

'l ' ' 

^ 

A    PART   OF   THE    DuKE    OF   PoRTLANd's   PALACE,   WHERE    A    GARDEX    MASKS 
SUBTERRANEAN    ROOMS 


The  home  of  the  famous  Bess  of  Hardwick 


A    PLACE    which    remains    A    WISTFUL    MEMORY:    HaDDON    HaLL 


HADDON  HALL 337 

sion — we  are  told  that  it  is  five  hundred  and  sixty 
feet  long,  and  it  is  broad  and  high  in  proportion — 
is  not  open  to  visitors,  nor  are  the  roads  that  run  near 
to  it,  but  anyone  is  permitted  to  drive  through  the 
park  and  to  view  it  in  its  distant  immensity  of  bulk 
across  the  valley  on  the  opposite  side  of  the  river. 
There  are  many  deer  in  Chatsworth  Park,  and  they 
are  very  tame,  indeed,  and  we  saw  a  number  of  sheep, 
plainly  lettered  on  their  sides  "  D.  D." — which  cleri- 
cal designation  means  Duke  of  Devonshire. 

Chatsworth  is  but  a  trifle  over  two  hundred  years 
old;  but  a  few  miles  away,  near  tiny  little  Rowsley, 
is  a  building  very  much  older  and  vastly  more  beau- 
tiful—Haddon  Hall. 

All  about  Haddon  Hall  is  a  country  of  exquisite 
loveliness,  a  country  of  streams  and  meadows  and 
flowers  and  scattered  trees  and  gently-rising  hills; 
and  the  name  of  one  of  these  hills,  tree-topped  as  it 
was,  appealed  to  us  from  its  aptness,  for  it  is  the 
Hunter's  Cap. 

On  the  whole,  we  were  glad  to  see  Haddon  Hall 
so  near  the  end  of  our  journey,  for  it  remains  in 
our  memory  as  the  very  poetry  of  building,  as  the 
most  lovable  of  all  the  homes  of  England.  It  was 
built  long  ago ;  much  of  it  is  over  five  hundred  jesiTS 
old,  much  of  it  four  hundred,  some  of  it  not  much 
over  three  hundred,  but  it  is  all  harmoniously 
perfect. 

It  is  not  now  either  lived  in  or  furnished,  but  the 
rooms  and  the  roof,  the  walls  and  the  windows,  are 
intact.  It  is  everywhere  a  place  of  fascination,  of 
delightf ulness ;  nowhere  in  England  does  the  man- 
tling ivy  cover  walls  and  corners  and  projections 
more  delectably.  It  is  a  house  poetically  located,  on 
a  wooded  hillside  a  little  above  a  soft-flowing  and 
alder-bordered  stream. 

Room  after  room  is  a  place  of  beauty;  and  from 


338 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

the  old  ballroom,  with  its  ancient  paneling  and  carv- 
ing, we  look  out  through  little  diamond-panes  at  a 
garden  glimpse  of  captivating  loveliness;  and  just 
out  there — and  how  a  good  old  love  story  helps  a 
place! — is  the  very  terrace  over  which  Dorothy  Ver- 
non slipped  away,  centuries  ago,  to  meet  her  lover; 
and  it  might  have  been  yesterday,  for  the  very  yews 
that  we  look  at  shadowed  her  as  she  fled. 

The  low  castellated  walls  of  Haddon  Hall,  its  fine 
inner  courtyard,  its  paneled  rooms,  its  terraces,  its 
lovely  gardens,  its  position  above  the  buttercupped 
meadows  and  the  bending  stream,  unite  to  make  it  a 
wistful  memory. 

We  had  a  rather  early  dinner,  ordered  as  we  went 
by  to  Haddon  Hall,  at  the  ancient  Peacock  Inn  at 
nearby  Rowsley,  an  inn  of  the  days  of  Queen  Eliza- 
beth, and  it  was  delightful  that  we  could  dine  so 
anciently  and  admirably  immediately  after  leaving 
Haddon  Hall,  and  then  we  started  off  for  a  long  ride 
toward  Liverpool,  not  expecting  to  find  much  of  in- 
terest on  the  way,  except  in  passing  through  Cran- 
ford  again. 

We  ran  rapidly,  by  a  highly  picturesque  hill  and 
valley  road,  through  Bakewell  and  up  through  a  long, 
narrow  ravine  to  Buxton,  a  place  said  to  be  the 
highest-located  town  in  England ;  a  large  and  popu- 
lar resort  with  hot  springs.  It  was  getting  dusk 
when  we  reached  there,  but  we  decided  to  go  farther 
before  stopping  for  the  night,  and  so  we  passed  on, 
but  we  did  take  a  look,  in  passing,  at  a  hospital  dome 
with  the  reputation  of  being  the  dome  of  greatest 
diameter  in  all  Europe — a  startling  claim  to  make, 
and  it  does  not  look  the  part,  but  the  claim  is  made 
in  all  seriousness  and  the  figure  of  one  hundred  and 
fifty-four  feet  is  offered,  which  is  certainly  a  little 
larger  diameter  than  that  of  the  dome  of  St.  Peter's 
or  even  of  the  Pantheon. 


HADDON  HALL 839 

Leaving  Buxton  and  this  astonishing  hump,  we 
went  on.  The  map  showed  we  were  approaching  a 
hill,  but  we  had  no  thought  that  there  would  be 
mountain  climbing  to  do  on  the  way  to  Liverpool. 
But  soon  we  struck  into  a  lonely  district,  up  from 
which  led  a  road  which  mounted  steadily  in  lengthy 
sweeps,  and  so  easily  that  the  gear  did  not  need  to 
be  shifted.  We  are  afraid  to  say  how  long  that  up- 
ward climb  was,  for  we  might  exaggerate,  but  we 
went  on  and  on  until,  as  we  found  later,  we  were 
at  the  altitude  of  one  thousand  six  hundred  and  eighty 
feet,  and  far  up  there  we  went  on  through  an  immense 
and  sweeping  stretch  of  miles  of  bareness  and  loneli- 
ness, with  the  ghostly  dusk  creeping  at  us  over  the 
moor.  And  in  that  desolateness  it  was  chill  and  cold. 
We  were  in  another  world  from  that  of  the  beautiful 
halls  we  had  so  recently  left.  We  passed  a  bare 
tavern  up  there  in  the  lofty  solitude,  the  Cat  and 
Fiddle;  and  either  this  lofty  road,  one  of  the  few 
highest  in  Great  Britain,  is  named  after  the  tavern 
or  the  tavern  is  named  for  the  road.  There  was  a 
vast  impressiveness  about  that  cold  and  high  and 
darkening  road;  and  after  a  while  we  began  to  go 
down,  by  long  and  gradual  descents,  and  it  was  dark 
when,  finishing  a  day's  run  of  eighty-two  miles,  we 
ran  into  Macclesfield,  and  went  up  the  brilliantly 
lighted  hill,  and  past  the  busy  street-market  and 
along  the  streets  that  were  thick  with  people;  and 
a  band  was  playing  and  it  was  a  general  Saturday- 
night  jollification. 

And  here,  on  our  last  night  before  reaching  Liver- 
pool, it  was  natural  to  talk  over  our  experiences  and 
estimate  how  we  stood.  The  car  and  its  engine  were 
apparently  in  perfect  condition;  we  had  not  even 
scraped  paint;  the  original  tires,  of  American  make, 
though  sold  to  us  in  England,  with  which  we  had  be- 
gun three  thousand  miles  before,  were  in  excellent 


340 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN^ 

condition,  and  just  one  was  beginning  to  show  some 
signs  of  wear;  the  inner  tubes  were  practically  per- 
fect and  the  two  extras  that  we  carried  had  never 
been  unpacked;  and  we  had  had  no  accidents. 

For  ourselves,  we  were  all  in  fine  physical  trim 
and  feeling  vastly  benefited  by  the  long  outdoor  life 
of  the  journey  and  the  splendid  air;  we  had  carried 
goggles,  but  not  one  of  us  had  ever  felt  any  need 
to  use  a  pair;  we  had  learned  that  in  the  damp  cli- 
mate of  England  and  in  its  air,  so  free  from  dust, 
there  need  be  no  disagreeable  consequences  from 
lengthy  exposure,  if  simple  precautions  are  taken, 
and  so  we  were  neither  tanned  nor  sunburned,  though 
we  had  rarely  had  the  top  of  the  car  up  for  even  half 
an  hour  at  a  time. 

Our  expense  for  gasoline  had  been  nine  pounds, 
fifteen  shilling  and  threepence,  for  a  total  distance 
(adding  to-morrow's  final  run  to  Liverpool)  of  two 
thousand  nine  hundred  and  twenty-seven  miles:  a 
cost  of  barely  one  cent  and  a  half  a  mile,  even  at 
the  rather  high  price  of  gasoline  (petrol)  in  Grreat 
Britain.  It  would  have  been  a  little  less  had  we 
from  the  first  used  No.  1  petrol,  slightly  more  ex- 
pensive but  more  powerful,  instead  of  No.  2 :  but  we 
had  mistakenly  tried  No,  2  for  a  while  on  the  advice 
of  the  car  manufacturers  themselves ;  one  of  the  many 
examples  that  we  noticed  of  a  British  frugality  which 
is  the  opposite  of  economy.  Lubricating  oil  for  the 
tour  cost  twenty  shillings,  and  there  had  been  also 
a  couple  of  cans  of  cup  grease  to  buy. 

We  went  to  bed  with  the  feeling  that  much  was 
to  go  out  of  our  lives  on  the  morrow:  and  with  the 
thoughts  of  seriousness  and  of  things  of  beauty,  of 
long,  long  rides  through  the  marvelous  English  coun- 
tryside, of  towers  and  cathedrals,  of  delightful  out- 
door luncheons  at  places  of  delightful  charm,  of  the 
wonder  and  exhilaration  of  it  all,  there  came  also 


HADDON  HALL 341 

thoughts  less  serious,  of  the  weight  of  copper  money 
that  would  no  more  need  to  be  borne  about,  of  the 
little  brass  pots  of  hot  bath  water  that  would  no  more 
be  carried  into  our  rooms,  of  the  red  threads  that 
we  should  cease  to  find  on  our  handkerchiefs,  of  the 
laundry  that  would  no  longer  be  (to  use  their  own 
word,  and  it  is  a  descriptive  one)  that  would  no 
longer  be  "  mangled  " ;  and  we  realized  that  we  should 
soon  be  away  from  a  country  where  the  people  can- 
not count  their  own  money — a  feat  quite  impossible, 
we  had  literally  found,  with  the  greater  part  of  the 
English.  And  with  all  this  medley  of  thoughts,  of 
things  serious  and  the  reverse,  we  went  to  sleep  for 
our  last  night,  in  a  very  comfortable  inn,  before  end- 
ing the  tour. 

Next  morning  we  started  again  on  our  way,  and 
crossed  our  early  route  at  that  most  satisfactory 
place,  drowsy  Cranford,  and  we  lunched  there  at  the 
same  little  inn  where  we  had  dined  and  slept  at  the 
very  beginning  of  the  journey — and  how  strange  it 
all  seemed!  And  from  here  it  was  a  run  of  thirty 
miles  to  Liverpool,  and  the  end,  for  there  the  car  was 
turned  over  to  the  purchaser  and  we  assembled  our 
belongings  and  prepared  for  the  steamer  and  for 
home. 

And  it  was  strange  to  feel  that  it  was  all  over: 
that  no  more  were  we  to  arise  in  the  morning  with 
glad  anticipation  of  the  discoveries  into  which  the 
wheels  were  to  whirl  us.  It  was  all  over;  and  others 
even  had  our  very  car  and  were  off  with  it,  enjoy- 
ing experiences  such  as  we  had  for  so  many  days 
enjoyed. 

And  that  is  precisely  the  important  part  of  it :  that 
what  we  did  was  nothing  difficult,  nothing  hard  for 
others  to  accomplish  and  enjoy;  and  the  reason  for 
writing  this  narrative  is  not  merely  to  point  out  where 
we  went,  or  to  describe  what  we  did  as  being  any- 


342 TOURING  GREAT  BRITAIN 

thing  of  personal  achievement,  but  to  show  how  easily 
any  motorist  may  do  likewise. 

For  our  course  need  not  be  precisely  followed. 
Where  we  took  one  road,  another  motorist  may  take 
another  road;  where  we  went  to  one  ruin  or  abbey 
or  town  or  place  of  note,  another  motorist  may  pre- 
fer to  see  some  other  ruin  or  abbey  or  town  or  place 
of  note.  Certain  places  must  needs  be  seen  by  all, 
but  England  is  so  rich  in  the  worth-while  that  as  to 
other  places  there  may  be  variety  of  taste  and  fancy, 
as  well  as  variations  dependent  on  a  longer  or  a 
shorter  length  of  tour. 

We  had  had  marvelous  experiences.  We  had  got 
at  the  very  heart  of  the  country.  We  had  had  six 
weeks  of  glorious  gliding  through  scenes  of  beauty 
and  interest.  All  had  been  fascination.  We  had 
tried  to  see  Great  Britain  adequately,  happily,  inex- 
pensively; and  we  had  succeeded.  In  planning  the 
tour  we  had  anticipated  much,  but  the  result  was  so 
infinitely  beyond  anticipation!  And  it  was  all  so 
reasonable,  so  feasible,  so  practicable! 


INDEX 


Abbey:  Battle,  163,  164;  Bolton, 
324;  Crowland,  225;  Dryburgh, 
258;  Fountains.  240-242;  Glas- 
tonbury, 106;  Kelso,  254;  Mel- 
rose, 256,  257,  283 ;  Tewkesbury, 
75-78;  Tintern,  89-91 

Abbotsford,   257 

Aberfeldy,   288 

Aberglasllyn,   Pass   of,   46 

Afton  Water,   300 

Aira    Force,    313 

Airedales,  325 

Alcomdene.    329 

AUowav,   298 

Alnwick.  250,  251 

Ambleside,    317 

Ancient  and  Honorable  Artillery,  187 

Andover,    149 

Ardlul,   293 

Arthur,  King,  124,  126 

Arundel,    157 

Ascot  state,  190 

Atholl,  Duke  of,  283 

Automobile  Club,  4,  15 

Automobile ;  see  Motor  Car 

Axminster,  134 

Ayr,  298 

Ayrshires,  297,  304 


Blairgowrie,   279 

Blandford,   141-143 

Blenheim,  202,   203 

Bolton   Abbey,   324 

Boscastle,    124 

Boston,    226-228 

Bothwell,   Earl  of,  261 

Braid  Hills,  269 

Branxton  Moor,   252 

Brewster,  William,  232 

Bridges:    Cally,    279;    Forth,    269; 

Tay,     277;     Triangular,     225; 

Twlzel,   252 
Bridgnorth,    64-66 
Bridport,    137 
Brighton,   158 
Bristol,   99-101 
Bristol  Channel,  110,  113 
Broadway,   204-207 
Bromley,  180,  181 
Bronte    home,    326 
Brougham  Castle,  312 
Browning,   Mrs.,   birthplace  of,   243 
Buccleuch,  Duke  of,  283,  301 
Burnham  Beeches,  193 
Burns,  298,  300,  304,  306 
Bushy   Park,   184 
Buxton,  338 


Baggage,  how  carried,  10 

Bangor,  38 

Bannockburn,  271 

Barmouth,  51 

Barnstaple,  119 

Barton-on-the-Heath,  206 

Barum,   119 

Bass  Rock.  262 

Bath,   101-103 

Battle  village,  163 

Battlefields :  Bannockburn,  271  ; 
Flodden,  252-254  ;  Hastings,  163  ; 
Killlecrankie,  286 ;  Sedgemoor, 
108  ;  the  Standard,  242  ;  Tewkes- 
bury, 76 

Beaconsfield  village,  194 

Becket,  Thomas  a,  173 

Beddgelert,  45 

Beech-tree  hedge,  279 

Ben  Lomond,  294 

Ben   More,  291 

Berwick,   252 

Berwick   Law,   264 

Bess  of  Hardwick,  335,  336 

Bideford,  119 

Birnam   Wood,   283 

Black-and-white  architecture,  59,  69 

Black  Prince,  172 


Cader  Idrls,  53 

Cally,  Bridge  of,  279 

Canterbury,    170-175 

Carlisle,   307 

Carlyle,   Jane  Welsh,   261,  303 

Carlyle,  Thomas,  261,  303,  305 

Carnarvon,  39-43 

Carnegie,  Andrew,  273 

Carse  o'  Gowrie,  278 

Casterbridge,    139 

Cat  and  Fiddle,  339 

Cathedrals:  Bangor,  38;  Bristol,  99; 
Canterbury,  170-174 ;  Carlisle, 
307 ;  Chester,  17,  19  ;  Chichester, 
156;  Durham,  242-245;  Exeter, 
130  ;  Glasgow,  296  ;  Gloucester, 
79-81 ;  Lincoln,  229,  230  ;  Man- 
chester, 9  ;  Peterborough,  224  ; 
RIpon,  238;  Rochester,  175; 
Salisbury,  146;  St.  Andrew's, 
276;  St.  Asaph's,  32-34;  Wells, 
104  ;  Winchester,  149  ;  Worces- 
ter, 71-73;  York,  234-236;  total 
in  England,  17,  18 

Cemmaes,  55-56 

Chalfont  St.  Giles,  196-197 

Charles  the  First,  65.  273 

Charles  the  Second.  72 

Charlie,   Prince,  266,  270 


343 


su 


INDEX 


Chatsworth,  336,  337 

Chatterton,    100 

Chaucer,  188 

Chepstow,   91-92 

Chester,   16-20 

Chesterfield,    336 

Cheviots,   250 

Chichester,   156 

Chipping  Norton,  204 

Chislehurst,   178 

Chollerford,    248 

Clovelly,    119-123 

Clumber  House,  332 

Clumber   spaniel,   332 

Cold  Door  Pass,  53 

Coldstream  Guards,  189,  254 

Coleridge,    109 

Colwyn  Bay,  35,  36 ;  town  of,  37 

Combe    Martin,    117 

Coniston  Water,  317,  818 

Conway,   37 

Cornwall,   124 

Coventry,    217 

Coxhoe,   243 

Craigenputtock,   303 

Craigmillar  Castle,  268 

Cranford,  6,   11-14,  341 

Crediton,   129 

Crianlarich,  292 

Crosses,    Town :   at   Lydney,  93 :   at 

Crediton,  129 
Crowland,    225 
Crystal  Palace,  181 
Cumberland,    308 
Cupar,   274 


Daffodils,  313 

Dartford,    178 

Dartmoor,   129 

Dean,  Forest  of,  83-84 

Dee,  Sands  of,  24 

Deer :     at    Blandford,     143 ;     Bushy 

Park,     187;     Chatsworth,    337; 

Fotheringay,      221 ;      Fountains 

Abbey,  240  ;  Oxford,  200  ;  Powis, 

57 
Derwent,   the,  247 
Derwentwater,  314 
Devil's    Elbow,    279,    280 
Devon,    114-124,   133 
Dickens,  home  of,   176 
Dochart,  the,  291 
Dolgelly,   51,    52 
Dome,   the  greatest,   338 
Doncaster,   232 
Doon,    Bonnie,    299 
Doone  Valley,  114 
Dorchester,  139-141 
Doyle,   A.   Conan,   123 
Drinking,   Sunday,  157-158 
Druid  stones,   147,  311 
Dryburgh  Abbey,  258 
Dukeries,   the,   332-337 
Dumbarton,  295 
Dumfries,  304 
Dundee,    277-278 
Dundonald,  35 
Dunfermline,    273 
Dunkeld,   283,   284 
Dunsinane,  283 
Durham,  242-246 


Eamont  Bridge,  312 

Earlston,  260 

Eastbourne,  160 

Eaton  Hall,  20 

Ecclefechan,  305 

Eden  Hall,  Luck  of,  310,  311 

Edinburgh,   265-268 

Edward  the  First,  42 

Eildons,  255,  258 

Eisteddfod,   38 

Elizabeth,  Queen,  100,  215,  225 

Elms,  69 

Eton   school,   191 

Exeter,   129-133 

Exmoor,   114 

Expenses,  340 


Falkirk,   270 

Falkland,   274 

Farmers,   68 

Fens,  226,  228,  229,  230 

Ferries :   Newnham,   93 ;   Tay,   277 

Fife,  274 

Flags  from  Bunker  Hill,  18 

Flodden,   252,   254,   259 

Floors  Castle,  254 

Ford  Castle,  253 

Forest:  of  Dean,  83,  84;  Sherwood, 

332-333 
Forth   Bridge,   269 
Fortingal,    289-290 
Foss-way,  230 
Fotheringay,   222-224 
Fountains  Abbey,  240-242 
Four-shirestone,  206 
Franklin,  Benjamin,   153,   154 
Funicular  for  motor  car,  115 


Gad's  Hill,  176 

Garage   charges,    309 

Gasoline,  285-286,  340 

Geoffrey  of  Monmoruth,  87 

George,  Lloyd,  50 

George   the   Fifth,   190 

Gladstone,  22 

Glasgow,   295,   296 

Glass  in  the  roads,  296,  308 

Glastonbury,  105-107 

Glen    Shee,    279,    280 

Gloucester,    79-82,   94 

God  Begot  House,   150 

Grade   crossings,   21,   224,  226,  277 

Grasmere,   316 

Gravesend,   177 

Gray's  Elegy,  191-193 

Great  Orme's   Head,   36 

Gretna  Green,  306 

Gypsies,  254 


Haddington,  261 
Haddon  Hall,  337,  338 
Ha-ha;    a   ditch,   22 
Halifax,   329 
Hampden,  John,   196 
Hampton  Court,  183-185 


INDEX 


345 


Hardwick  Hall,  335,  336 

Hardy,  Thomas,  139,  140 

Harlech,    46-49 

Harold,  King,  16,  163 

Hastings,  161 

Hawarden,  22-24 

Haworth,  326,  329 

Hebden  Bridge,  327 

Helvellyn,  315 

Hemans,  Mrs.,  33 

Henry  the  Fifth,  Prince  Hal,  84,  87, 

176 
Henry  the  Eighth,  107,  143,  183 
Heptonstall,  327 
Hexham,    248 

Hilly  roads,  63,  93,  112,  327 
Holywell,  25-29 
Honiton,   133 
Hotspur,  59 


Ilfracombe,  118 

Ingelow,    Jean,    228 

Inns  :  at  Bridgnorth,  64  ;  Carnarvon, 
39  ;  Cemmaes,  55  ;  Clovelly,  123  ; 
Cranford,  12  ;  Glastonbury,  105  ; 
on  Great  North  Road,  231 ; 
at  Holywell,  26;  Market  Har- 
borough,  219,  220;  Monmouth, 
84;  Oundle,  222;  near  Haddon 
Hall,  338;  the  Royal  Goat,  45; 
at  Salisbury,  146;  Ship,  97;  at 
Thornhill,  302;  Winchester,  150 

Inn  names,  45,  150,  320,  321 

Inns,  owned  by  trusts,  98 

Insurance  for  tour,  4 

Inversnaid,   293 

Iron  Bridge,  63 

Itchen,  the,   152 


Jeffreys,  Judge,  60,  132 
John,  King,  72,  185,  228,  251 
Jones,   Inigo,    302 
Jones,  John  Paul,  306 
Jordans,   195 


Katherine  of  Aragon,  224 
Katrine,  Loch,  293 
Keighley,  325 
Kelso,  254 
Kenilworth,  215-216 
Kent,   170 
Keswick,  314 
Kidderminster,   67 
Killiecrankie,   286 
Killin,    291 
Kilmarnock,  297 
Kingston,  182 
Kipling,    home   of,    159 
Kirkcaldy,  273 
Kirk   Yetholm,   254 
Knole  House,  179 
Knutsford,  6,  11-14,  341 


Langshaw,  tower  of,  258 

Lauderdale,   260 

Launceston,   127 

Laundry,  how  arranged,  10 

Laurie,  Annie,  302 

Leith,  267 

Lincoln,   229,   230 

Linlithgow,  269 

Liverpool,    341 

Lodore,  314 

Lomond,   Loch,   292-295 

London,   180,    181 

Lord  of  the  Manor,  121 

Luggage   carrier,    10 

Luncheons  out  of  doors,  15,  36,  110 

Lydney,   93 

Lynmouth,   114,   115 

Lynton,    116 

M 

Macclesfield,   339 

Manchester,    6-11 

Market  Harborough,  219,  220 

Marston  Moor,  237 

Mary  Queen  of  Scots,  222-224,  261, 
266,  268,  269 

Maxwellton's  braes,  302,  303,  304 

Melrose,  256-259,  283 

Menai    Straits,    38 

Milton,  196 

Moniave,    303 

Monmouth,    84-89 

Moreton-in-the-Marsh,   206 

Motor-car :  cost  of  renting  and  ship- 
ping, 2 ;  buying  and  selling  in 
England,  2-3 ;  dear  in  England, 
309; 

Motoring :  the  tour,  1 ;  daily  aver- 
age, 1 ;  expenses,  3,  340 ;  going 
without  haste,  216 ;  resume  of 
tour,    340 

N 

Naseby,    219 

Nether  Stowey,  109 

Nettles,   135 

New  Cumnock,  300 

Newark  Castle,  259 

Newnham,    93 

Newtown,    57 

Nith,    the,   301,   304 

Nithdale,    301 

Norham    Castle,   252 

Northumberland,   248-251 

Northumberland,  Duke  of,  250 


Oak,  black,  brown,   or  gray,  245 
Oil,    lubricating,    340;    how    carried, 

Ormsley,  69 
Oundle,  222 
Oxford,    199-202 


Lag,  tower  of,  304 
Lammermoor,  260 


Parracombe,    116 
Patterdale,   313 
Peerage,   the,  323 


346 


INDEX 


Penn,  William,  burial  place,  195 ; 
father  of,  100 

Penrith,    308,   310 

Percy,  Harry,  59 

Percy,    Lord,    251 

Percy's  Reliques,  65 

Perth,    278-282 

Peterborough,   224 

Pevensey,    160,    161 

Philipse,   Frederick,   18 

Pickwick  at  Bath,  102;  at  Tewkes- 
bury, 75 

Pilgrim  Fathers,  226-227 

Pimperne,   143 

Pinchbeck,    226 

Pitlochry,   285 

Pocahontas,    177 

Pontius   Pilate,  289,   290 

Porcelain  works,  73 

Porlock,   112 

Portland,  Duke  of,  333 

Portsmouth,     156 

Powis  Castle,  57-58 

Prince's  Risborough,  197 


Bain,  56,  95 

Rhuddlan,  35 

Richard  Cceur  de  Lion,  172 

Riding  Mill,  248 

Ripon,  238-240 

Road,  Great  North,  231,  232,  234 

Reads:  character  of,  39;  flint,  168; 
funicular,  115 ;  hand-broken 
stone,  66;  hilly,  63,  112,  114, 
116,  327,  328;  steam-rollers  on, 
66 

Roads,  reasons  for  excellence,  308, 
309 

Roads,  rules  of  the,  30 

Robin   Hood,  332 

Rob  Roy  cottage,  292 

Rochester,  175 

Roman  camps :  at  Chollersford,  248 ; 
at  Fortingal,  290 

Roman   Wall,   247-249 

Rose,   the   Harrison,   283 

Roslyn,   268 

Rottingdean,   159 

Rougemont  Castle,  132 

Rowsley,  337 

Roxburgh  Castle,  254 

Rugby,    218 

Runnimede,   185-186 

Ruskin,   home  of,   318 

Rydal  Water,  316,  317 

Rye,  168 

S 

St.  Andrew's,   276,   277 

St.   Asaph's,  32-34 

St.    Cross,    151 

St.   Mary's   Loch,   259 

Salisbury,    145-147 

Salop,    64 

Sampford  Courtney,  128 

Sanquhar,    301 

Sarum,  144 

Schools,    ancient :     Blandford,     142 ; 

Bridgnorth,   65  ;   Coventry,  217  ; 

Eton,     191 ;    Manchester.    9-10 ; 


Rugby,     218;    Shrewsbury,    60; 

Stratford,    211 
Scott,  203,   215,   252,  256,  260,   262, 

274,  278,  293 
Scrooby,   232 
Selkirk,  259 
Sevenoaks,   179 
Severn,   the,   57,   58,  60,  62,  79,  93, 

95 
Severn   tunnel,  85 
Shakespeare,   210-213,   283 
Sheffield,  330 
Sherwood  Forest,  332 
Shire,  meaning  of   word,  68 
Shoreham,  157,   158 
Shrewsbury,    58-61 
Shropshire,  58-64 
Sidney,  Sir  Philip,  60 
Sign,  old  wrought-iron,  219 
Skipton,   321-323 
Smailholm    Tower,    257 
Snowdon,    44,    52 
Solway  Firth,  306,  307 
South    Downs,    135,    138,    141,    144, 

160 
Stanley,  Henry  M.,  35 
Stirling,   270-272 
Stoke    Poges,    191-193 
Stonehenge,   147,   148 
Stratford,   209-213 
Sulgrave    Manor,    204 
Surfleet,    226 
Swineshead,   228 


Tantallon,   261-264 

Tay,  Loch,  290 

Tay,    the,    277,    281,    282,    285,    287 

Tea :    near    Chipping    Norton,    205 ; 

at    Edinburgh,    265 ;    Fountains, 

242;  Norham,  252;  Tintern,  90 
Tewkesbury,     75-78 
Thame,   198 

Thames,    boating   on    the,    188 
Thirlmere,    315 
Thornhill,    301-302 
Till,  the,   252 
Tintagel,    124-126 
Tintern   Abbey,   89-91 
Tire,  doing  without  an  extra,  11 
Tires,  condition  at  end  of  tour,  339- 

340 
Toll-gates,    168 
Tour,  outline  of,  4 ;  summing  up  of, 

339-340 
Towns,  close-built,   63,   67 
Tramps,   103,   112,   124,   270,  287 
Trent,    the,    231 
Trusts,    240 
Tummel,    the,    285 
Tweed,  the,  252,   255,   257 
Twilight,    lingering,    254,   290 
Twizel    Bridge,    252 
Twyford.   153 
Tyler,  Wat,  172,  178 
Tyne,   the,  248 

U 

Ullswater,    312,   313 
Underground  rooms  at  Welbeck,  333, 
334 


INDEX 


347 


w 

Wakeman,  at  Rlpon,  239 

Wales :  first  English  Prince  of,  41, 
42,  59;  last  Welsh  prince  of, 
42,  59  ;  the  backbone  of,  52 

Walland    Marshes,    169 

Waltham,   Bishop's,   155 

Walton,    Izaak,    72,    95,    152 

Warwick,   213,   214 

Water   for    motor,    52,    53 

Watling   Street,    178 

Welbeck  Abbey,   333-334 

Wells,    104,    105 

Welshpool,   57 

Westminster,   Duke  of,   20 

Westward  Ho!  119 

Wickham,   155 

Willersley,    207 

William  and  Mary,   183 

William  the  Conqueror,  130,  149, 
150,    160-163 


William  of  Wykeham,  149 

Wimbledon,    182 

WInchelsea,   164-167 

Winchester,    149,    150 

Windermere,  317,  319 

Windsor,    187-190 

Wolsey,  Cardinal,  183,  200,  282 

Woodstock,   203 

Worcester,   70-74 

Worcestershire,    68-74 

Wordsworth,  90,  259,  260,  313,  310, 

317 
Worksop,   330 
Wye,   Valley  of  the,  89-91 


Yarrow,  the,  259 
Yews,    trimmed,    63 
York,   234-237 
Yorkshire  Moors,  327-329 
Yorkshire,  West  Riding  of,  327 


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